Part 2

Just lots more good free fiction rounded up and corralled for ya, pilgrim.


Fiction

• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "The Angel Azrael Delivers Justice to the People of the Dust" by Peter Darbyshire. Fantasy.
"The angel Azrael rode through the dust storm for three days. He figured it to be three days, anyway. It was hard to tell for certain, because the storm turned what little of the world he could see into night, and then into nothing at all. He closed his eyes and let his dead horse take him where it would."

• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "Seeing" by Stephen V. Ramey. Fantasy.
"Mist blanketed the Tsoi River. The clink-clack of the towing elephant’s harness became an eerie rattle from both banks, the gurgling chuck of water against the towboat’s hull were lips sucking flesh from chicken bones. A shiver went through Rahami Honra. She rubbed her forearm, careful not to scratch the spider-bite welts that marked her as Web Seer."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Dancing" by M. E. Garber. Science Fiction.
"That's how my dad used to say things--how you say and then a long list of the exact words that you would actually use to say it. He was originally from a country called France when Earth was still alive. I think it made him feel good to pretend like he still was an outsider here, a piece of the life that he had before it all went down."

• At Lightspeed: "Traveller’s Rest" by David I. Masson. Science Fiction.
"It was an apocalyptic sector. Out of the red-black curtain of the forward sight-barrier, which at this distance from the Frontier shut down a mere twenty metres north, came every sort of meteoric horror: fission and fusion explosions, chemical detonations, a super-hail of projectiles of all sizes and basic velocities, sprays of nerve-paralysants and thalamic dopes."

• At  Lightspeed: "A Meaningful Exchange" by Kat Howard. Fantasy.
"Quentin told lies to people for money. Or drugs. Or kittens. Or anything, really. The particular currency didn’t matter, so long as what was being offered had value to the person who needed the lie." Text and Audio.

• At Nightmare: "Out of Touch" by Simon Strantzas. Horror.
"I grew up in the suburbs, in a small bungalow house identical to every other bungalow house on my block. Row after row of these houses, all in straight lines, filled the streets as far as my bicycle would take me. That was why the house across from my own never struck me as strange or out-of-the-ordinary, not in all the years I shared the street with it."

• At Tor.com: "A Cup of Salt Tears" by Isabel Yap. Dark Fantasy. Horror.
"Makino’s mother taught her caution, showed her how to carve her name into cucumbers, and insisted that she never let a kappa touch her. But when she grows up and her husband Tetsuya falls deathly ill, a kappa that claims to know her comes calling with a barbed promise. “A Cup of Salt Tears” is a dark fantasy leaning towards horror that asks how much someone should sacrifice for the one she loves."






Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Changing the Past" by Barton Paul Levenson. Alternative History. 
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Dancing" by M. E. Garber. Science Fiction.
• At Daily Science Fiction: " 
• At Flashes in the Dark: "The Red Plague" by Matthew Wilson. Horror.
• At Quantum Muse: "Jatawaff" by Michelle Day. Science Fiction.
• At Strange Horizons: "A Pantheon of Madnesses" by Cory O'Brien. Poem, text and audio.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Time" by Roger Dale Trexler. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction

• At Beam Me Up: "BMU # 420" Science Fiction.
"Don't Trust Venusian Mushrooms" by Doug Hilton. - "a tongue in cheek tale" and chapter two part two of Crystalwizard's "Wizard's Bane."

• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "Five Fruits I Ate in Sandar Land" by Michael Haynes. Fantasy.
"The man hesitates a moment, looking me over. I will eat the core if that is what he demands. I have come too far not to keep going; have yielded what little I was born with except my honor. If I stop now, I will retain nothing."

• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "Precious Meat" by Catherine S. Perdue. Fantasy.
"I lifted my muzzle and sniffed. The wood was different today. Fine dust still hung in the air and sparkled in sunlit shafts. Such a thing this sparkling was. I gazed at it in wonder. Had the light ever been just so before? Was this a new thing?"


E-Book

• At Amazon: "For Odin, for Thor, for Asgard" [Kindle Edition]
"A collection of short stories of Allfather Odin, his blood son the mighty Thor and their magnificent home of Asgard.

The tales, often in very cosmic settings, see the Asgardian gods in a constant struggle for existence against other great powers, cosmic and mystic, of the Multiverse."