Bards and Sages Quarterly (July 2023)

By Julie Ann Dawson, AJ Cunder, J.R. Mikolin and 4 more

For over a decade, the Bards and Sages Quarterly has been a showcase for both new and established authors to share their speculative works. The short stories presented in each issue serve as a delightful sampler of the speculative genres. Whether your preference is sword and sorcery, time-travel, space exploration, gothic horror, urban fantasy, or any of the speculative genres, you are sure to find something to love in the pages of this magazine.

 

In this issue, stories by E. C. Bogosian, AJ Cunder, Brian Hugenbruch, J.R. Mikolin, Kiran Kaur Saini, and Jonathan Sherwood.

 

A sample of the stories in this issue:

 

When it takes longer than expected for a valiant prince to rescue her, a princess locked in a tower takes matters into her own hands in The Princess's Tale.

 

A Hairstyling Hospice AI forges a new way to respect the tights of incapacitated patients in Coiffeur Seven.

 

After rescuing a woman accused of being a vampire, a bi-racial young man is declared a murder suspect instead of a hero in Skinwalker.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bards and Sages Publishing
• Release date: Jun 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223912101

Julie Ann Dawson

Julie Ann Dawson is an author, editor, publisher, RPG designer, and advocate for writers who may occasionally require the services of someone with access to Force Lightning (and in case it was not obvious, a bit of a geek). Her work has appeared in a variety of print and digital media, including such diverse publications as the New Jersey Review of Literature, Lucidity, Black Bough, Poetry Magazine, Gareth Blackmore’s Unusual Tales, Demonground, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and others. In 2002 she started her own publishing company, Bards and Sages. The company has gone from having two titles to over one hundred titles between their print and digital products. In 2009, she launched the Bards and Sages Quarterly, a literary journal of speculative fiction. Since 2012, she has served as a judge for the IBPA's Benjamin Franklin Awards.

Book preview

The Man in Our Eyes

by J.R. Mikolin

JACK DROPPED SOME QUARTERS in for the magic fingers and rapid-fired the TV remote. He saw the number on his phone, grunted, and lay back on the bed as a cool L.A. afternoon swept in. He landed on Firing Line with Bill Buckley. He liked Buckley. His guest, seated across and rolling a cigar between his fingers, was Groucho Marx. He liked Groucho too.

MR. BUCKLEY: And the line, I’d like to say goodbye to your wife, to which the reply was, Who wouldn’t? I’d like to begin by asking Mr. Marx – do you mind if I call you Mr. Marx?"

MR. MARX: I wish you’d call me Groucho.

MR. BUCKLEY: Alright, I will, ah –

MR. MARX: And I’ll call you Willie.

MR. BUCKLEY: Fine. (piqued, he smiles stiffly, blue eyes flicker) Ah, whether the laughs those two lines got on vaudeville is, ah, a cue to the question, is the world funny?

MR. MARX: No, I don’t think it’s terribly funny. I don’t think it’s ever terribly funny. Sometimes there are isolated pieces of the world that is funny. But, generally, it’s a pretty serious world, always has been. No, I don’t think the world is funny.

He hit SEND.

Godfrey there?

Hello, Mr. Lawrence. Yes. Please hold.

Jack! How was your flight?

Nauseating.

Just think of it as another cross-exam.

It’s not just another cross-exam.

You’ve deposed him fifty times at least.

It’s different this time!

How’s it different?

"Are you kidding me, Godfrey? ‘How’s it different?’ The man’s dead, for Christ’s sake!"

Look. You ask your questions, go back to your hotel, and get drunk. What’s the problem?

Why do I keep doing this? He muttered.

The silence on the line was a crack inching along a pane of glass.

Dammit! Listen! Because that’s one thing you don’t do! The Supreme Triple-Plus Superior Court ruled three weeks ago that Dr. Berg is alive and that his deposition is going as scheduled: this expert, their way, this afternoon. Don’t want to do your job? Want your high-minded idealism to take precedence? All your bullshit? Fine! You do and you’re fired!

A baroque trumpet sounds, the words Firing Line superimposed over the seated figures of Buckley and Marx.

Godfrey?

And there it was. The soundless disconnect like the instantaneous shrinking of consciousness. The little white TV dot of the human brain, suddenly blip then gone.

THE LOBBY WAS EMPTY. The directory on the wall still showed his name.

D CTOR ROB T B RG, EXPERT 2100

The missing letters, yellow with age, lay like dead flies on the tray below.

He was renowned and detested among lawyers. Well into his eighties he expounded on all subjects with textbook accuracy. He nimbly wound his way through the deposition maze, leaving the best lawyers weary and trapped at the dead-ends of their own logical fallacies. Many said he was a genius. He probably was. He was also rich. Amassed millions in the expert racket. He always pushed the limits of truth, tying thought to reality by an invisible thread. Jack recalled his last meeting with Dr. Berg who had famously maintained a hearty, rather over-fed, appearance. He had withered. His face was ashen gray and ominously concave. Stage-four lung cancer. It intensified the indecency of this deposition. He half-expected shadowy figures in cowled robes bowing over a bloodied alter.

Jack pushed the elevator button.

The crack of his footsteps rebounded off the marble floor. He reached the door. It was locked. He pushed the intercom. A speaker near the door emitted a female voice.

Hello? Hello?

He leaned in close. Jack Lawrence, for Dr. Berg’s dep.

You’re the first one here. I’ll buzz you in.

He stepped into the doctor’s lobby and turned to the receptionist. She was petite, black hair pixie style, glossy black fingernails, and a black t-shirt.

I’m Charlie. A blood-red imperative ran across her shirt. KILL EM ALL, it said. You’re here for the deposition?

Jack nodded.

You can wait in the conference room.

She led him to an empty room with a long table and chairs. A camera and tripod stood at one end.

Are you Dr. Berg’s new secretary? She didn’t look like anybody’s secretary.

Engineer. She smiled sharply and left the room.

A few minutes passed.

A knock at the door.

Come in.

Two men in blue suits. The bigger of the two, a pasty-looking man about sixty and just as many pounds overweight, extended his arm.

Jack shook his hand.

E. James Brautigan. He jerked his thumb. My associate, Jonathan Richards.

The young one, thinner, trimmed beard, bright yellow bowtie, dropped two large brief bags and closed the door behind them. He scuttled over to a chair.

I’m sorry. I forgot your name. Brautigan said.

The failed memory was a common affliction among attorneys, a not-so-subtle gibe often issued by old, cranky hacks.

He shrugged. Jack Lawrence.

I have to be frank, he said, his voice cracking. I think this charade is an embarrassment – um - to the bar. The words came like prisoners being prodded over the brink of utterance. He swallowed a belch and pressed a fist into his belly. His pale face took on a slightly greenish hue. That the man was struggling to accept the metaphysical implications of what was about to occur could be inferred from the queasiness that had momentarily declared itself.

I’m just deposing him, Brautigan.

I’ll have you know that when I retained him he was, well, you know what I mean.

The door flew open. It was Charlie, beaming with a kill ‘em all grin. Everyone ready?

The attorneys looked at one another as though a formal ceremony should take place before the deposition commenced. In their only moment of solidarity, they regarded the empty chair, terrified.

A sound, at first faint but heavy, arose. It became almost palpable, like the baritone drone of a Tibetan chant radiating from the floor.

CRASH!

Brautigan issued a strange, feline Eeweek! His associate threw his arms over his face and curled-up into a ball. Jack, being not so visibly afraid, grabbed the arms of his chair and peered bug-eyed at the monstrous bulk now being shoved in through the doorway. A pair of orbs, cataract gray, stared back. The head jiggled like a water balloon on a stick as two gorilla-sized men in overalls maneuvered the load which was balanced on the edge of an industrial-sized dolly.

Brautigan swallowed hard. A viscous moan oozed from his gaping mouth.

Careful, dammit! Charlie shouted as they rolled it in place at the end of the table.

He had been dead six months. No one had heard anything about him since. Some didn’t know he was dead. One day, as the story went, while tending his zen garden, Dr. Berg collapsed and died. The idea of his not being around had left many lawyers terrified that their cases might end up spiraling into an epic maelstrom. No one was about to let that happen. So the legal industry devised a fix. A clerk from someone’s office, no one knows for sure whose, approached him at home one morning a few weeks after the diagnosis with a reasonable proposal. Might an eternity spent explicating be a more attractive alternative to dull, lonely, death?

The hands came down from Richards’ face. He pulled a yellow pad out of his brief bag.

Brautigan’s now pea-green face revealed nothing of the upheaval taking place inside. Incompatible with everything he had ever believed, yet here it was.

The men eased the torso down and slid the dolly out from under it. It sat on a large black base, like a portable witness stand, upon which it looked to have been planted.

They dumbly stared. Everyone except Charlie who was busy plugging wires into a socket in the table.

Brautigan swallowed a globby belch. Richards madly scribbled in his pad. Jack awaited some semblance of normalcy to return. It didn’t.

You two can go.

The two laborers stood on either side of Dr. Berg’s torso. Arms hung at his sides like rubber hoses.

Charlie paused momentarily. I said you can go!

Their puzzled expressions reflected an incongruity comparable to a girl-sized kernel of corn popping before their eyes.

One nodded at the other. They shrugged in tandem.

Tell the others they can come in now.

The door closed. Clumsy footsteps faded with distance.

Charlie reached into Dr. Berg’s sacrum (where it would be) and pulled out a small laptop from a zipped pouch beneath the back flaps of his jacket. She pressed intuitively on the nape of his neck, and a little door opened. She pressed another button inside, then flipped it closed.

Charlie looked up at the attorneys. Once we get on the record and the intros are finished – who’s asking the questions here?

Me. Jack returned his gaze to Dr. Berg.

Don’t worry about him. I can see he’s got you all a bit off-kilter. Once I switch him on, it’ll be like he never croaked. She giggled, not seeming to notice she was the only one amused.

A man and woman came in. One was the videographer. He took his place at the far end of the table. The other was the court reporter. She rolled her bag around Dr. Berg and sat down next to him. Neither noticed his condition.

Hi, Katrina.

The court reporter turned to Jack. Good morning, Mr. Lawrence. Nice to see you again. Her smile was a bright red candied apple.

Katrina pulled out and assembled her stenograph. She noticed the stranger, black t-shirt and nose ring, seated across from her.

Excuse me. Are you an attorney?

Finger gun quick to the head, the phantom recoil, a malignant smirk.

Katrina turned to Jack, stupefied, then to the expert. Hello, Dr. Berg, how are you today? Katrina, having acted as his court reporter for several years, knew Dr. Berg quite well. As it turned out, however, she had been among those still ignorant of his oriental misadventure.

Not knowing precisely what he should say, Jack said nothing.

Richards snorted.

Charlie’s face flashed with teeth. She knew what she was doing, turning the masses in their mad rush for immortality on to new dimensions of sight and sound.

Dr. Berg’s head came alive with twitching electrical surges. His formerly drooping mouth, those fishy gray orbs, now formed a beaming smile. Why, hello, Katrina. You are looking as beautiful as ever.

And you are as charming as ever, she said, now surveying the queer faces staring back from across the table.

Brautigan attempted a smile but achieved only a clenching of teeth.

Richards, his nose pressed up against his pad, mumbled a variable series of squeals.

Katrina tracked Jack’s frozen stare. A shadow descended upon her face. Dr. Berg stretched his rubbery face into a taut smile. His limbs, still flaccid, hung on either side. She ran her eyes first over his torso, then below where legs and a pair of newly shined Johnson & Murphy’s should have emerged.

AAAAAUUUUUUUGGHHHH!

She jumped into Jack’s lap and wrapped her arms around him as though he were a buoy bobbing in the stormy sea of stark reality. She pressed her face into his shoulder and gagged. Was it the