Kzine Issue 16

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  “So—do I call you Santa?”

  “Call me Santan, close enough.” His smile widened. It wasn’t pleasant. “I work the edges of religious events, all religions of course, but I’m especially fond of subverting Christian holidays. Halloween candy the night before All Souls Day, the Easter bunny sugar high first thing Sunday morning, the New Year’s Eve baby conceived in lust the night before Christ is circumcised—you get the idea.”

  I was starting to defog. “You’re crazy. Get out of my house!”

  As his smile stretched into a death rictus, I screamed. The back of my right hand spouted fire, the skin charring and cracking open, the fluids underneath bubbling. I screamed again.

  “No one can hear you. I’ve arranged for a little privacy. Do I have your attention now?”

  The odor of burnt flesh filled the room. I moaned and grabbed my right hand with my left. The booze I’d drunk helped numb the pain, but not nearly enough.

  His smile had returned. “Humor me, Steve, while I explain things. I usually just stage manage, because most people are willing to go to hell on their own. Like flushing themselves away. But on the high holy days I like to give myself a little present or two, persons who seem morally constipated. You won, you lucky sinner to be.”

  I’d backed up in my chair so far my feet almost didn’t touch the carpet. My hand was seeping blood and fluid, my eyes seeping tears of pain. “Please, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not interested.”

  “You should be. Imagine with me that your 200,000 word novel gets picked up by a major publisher, and hits number one on the New York Times best seller list…” As Santan spoke I rode his words and lived that success; money, adulation, willing women all along the book tour…

  Santan yanked me onto another path.“ And let’s say you reconcile with Jenny, that she understands that your drinking is part of your genius…”

  Jenny and I in a cabin, happily sharing a twin bed, doing little things for each other. Then a baby, the carrier of my essence into the future…

  “And at thirty five you should have twenty, maybe even twenty five good years before your liver gives out. Think what you could do, could enjoy.”

  “I don’t know if or what a soul is, but I don’t think I want you carrying a contract back in the empty present bag to the North Pole.”

  Santan looked relieved. “Well Ho, Ho, No. That signed contract nonsense is just a theatrical gimmick you people use. Your solemn word is more than enough.”

  “And what if I change my mind later on and work hard at redemption?”

  He picked a piece of lint off his suit and held it between thumb and forefinger. A wisp of smoke rose from his fingers. “Afraid not. Once you agree you won’t remember our little chat. It’s for your benefit. You won’t be having second thoughts or trying to break our agreement. You won’t know it exists. You’ll think everything is happening quite naturally.”

  “And when I tell you no?”

  “You won’t. You don’t know how to believe in souls, nobody really does. And I assure you that otherwise your life from tomorrow on gets unbearably worse. I’ll make sure of it.”

  I wanted to run, but at the same time wanted to know more. ’Father of lies,’ I told myself blearily. ’Even in a drunk dream I can’t believe him.’ The pain from my burnt hand tore into my thoughts. “What…would I change?”

  “Well, the back of your hand will heal into an almost unnoticeable stigma. I do so like to mark my own. But otherwise you’ll stay exactly the same person on your road to hell.”

  “Would I make wishes now?”

  Santan shifted in his seat, and embers of burnt fabric dropped onto the floor and smoldered. “Don’t be a stupid drunk. Everything I do has to have a natural cause. You’d have no explanation for a bag full of gold coins or jewels, and we can’t have folks questioning their comfortable world view. They might reform.”

  I felt a belly surge of greed that almost choked me. “I work really hard at editing and research, could you take over some of that?”

  Santan’s face reddened. He waved his hand brusquely and heat waves eddied between his fingers. “You ape offal!” Spittle sprayed from between his teeth and vaporized. “Writing is creative. It’s on you. I’ll get your verbiage sold, but don’t begin to think that I’m your enabling muse.”

  He waved his hand again, more gently. “Sorry, I get irritated at your anthropoidal presumptions. So, let’s conclude this before those damned church bells start clanking.”

  Santan shifted in his seat. More embers fell, and smoke began rising from the armrests. “Just say yes, Steve, and it’s all yours—money, fame, privilege, women. I’ll throw in restoring your hair. If you’re still bothered, just think of this as a satisfying wet dream that you won’t feel guilty about when you wake up.”

  I sat for a few seconds without saying anything, yanked in one direction by greed, lust and vanity, and in the other by fear and… what? Something else. Something important. I shook my head, trying to get the alcoholic snot to break loose in my brain. Why did his offer seem wrong?

  “You know,” I said, “I’m a writer, maybe a bad one, maybe a hack, but writing is all I really want to do. I even sober up a little so I can write. And the tool, the mechanism I use is my unhappiness with myself and my situation. Without that core of dissatisfaction and worry, I couldn’t write, not fiction anyway. What you offer would take that away. So I have to say no. Sorry.”

  Santan snapped off the right arm of the chair and it burst into flame as he held it. He heaved out of the chair, his hair almost touching the ceiling. “Very well. Here are my presents for you. You get to keep the scar, no charge. Jenny will cheat on you before the divorce papers are filed. Without her income you’ll have to mooch from strangers to get by. And your alcoholic death will be sooner and more painful. Season’s Greetings.”

  He spun sideways and seemed to narrow and shrink. But then he turned back his head leered and said, “Caveat cacoethes scribendi, causa mortis.’” Then he spun again, shriveled and vanished.

  I swallowed a few serious slugs of whiskey and passed out. When I came to my right hand burst with pain at every pulse beat. The chair where Santan had been sitting was burnt and broken. And I remembered what had happened. Jenny would be downstairs soon and that drama would begin, but I got up and shambled over to the computer. I typed in a few guesses at the expression he’d used. It was Latin. The translation seemed to be “Beware of an insatiable urge to write, it’s fatal.”

  Contributor Notes

  Edward Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He has his original wife, but advises that after forty nine years they are both out of warranty. Ed’s had a hundred forty stories and poems published so far and two books. His collected fantasy and horror stories are due for publication by Gnome on Pig Press late in 2016.

  Joseph Benedict lives and writes in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His work has appeared in Under the Bed, Theme of Absence, the Inwood Indiana Press, and 9Tales Told in the Dark. His short story, “Just What You Need,” will be appearing in Hindered Souls, the forthcoming anthology from editor M.R. Tapia.

  Michael T. Best is the author of two novels for young readers (“The Road to Thune” and “Odyssey Rising”) as well as “Great Americans: The Founders,” an American history book profiling ten forgotten heroes of the Revolutionary War era.

  Derrick Boden has previously appeared in Kzine, and has also had his stories published in Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, Perihelion, The Colored Lens, Unbound Anthology I, Saturday Night Reader, and Theme of Absence.

  Tara Campbell [www.taracampbell.com] is a Washington, D.C. based writer of crossover sci-fi. With a BA in English and an MA in German Language and Literature, she has a demonstrated aversion to money and power. Previous publication credits include McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Establishment, Barrelhouse, Punchnel’s, Luna Station Quarterly, SciFi Romance Quarterly, Masters Review and Queen Mo
b’s Teahouse. Tara’s first novel, TreeVolution, is being published by Lillicat Press this fall. The book is an eco-science fiction adventure in which genetically modified trees in Washington State begin talking back to humans and fighting for their rights. As the mutation spreads, trees cause havoc by mugging loggers and spreading forest fires toward cities. Two unlikely heroes join forces to figure out how to stop the trees from destroying the Pacific Northwest, and possibly the whole world, in this novel about trees, evolution, and revolution.

  Thomas Canfield has had over ninety pieces of short fiction published, virtually all of them genre pieces in the fields of sf/f/mystery. That is, fiction rooted in an appreciation for the possibilities inherent in speculative literature - the license to stretch the envelope, not to be bound by formula and convention. His novel The Moon Is An Arrant Thief is available on Amazon. Canfield’s phobias run to politicians, lawyers and oil company executives. He likes dogs and beer.

  Charles Ebert has been writing science fiction on and off since high school. He has published a novel, The Sword of Dalmar through Createspace and has sold short stories to Acidic Fiction, Encounters, Kaleidotrope, Electric Spec and Aoife’s Kiss. He published three short stories in Aphelion and has had two stories win honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest. He is currently a librarian in Durham NC.

  Graeme Hurry edited Kimota magazine in the 90s and a horror anthology called Northern Chills in 1994. Now he has branched out by editing this kindle only magazine, Kzine. He has a story in Terror Tales of The Scottish Highlands anthology and an honourable mention in Year’s Best Horror 2001 for a story he collaborated on with Willie Meikle called The Blue Hag.

  Meryl Stenhouse has had stories published in Shimmer, Aurealis and Bastion Science Fiction Magazine.

  Dave Windett is professional comics artist and illustrator. He has worked for numerous publishers in Britain, Europe and America - among them Cappelen Damm, DC Thomson, Fleetway, Future, Marvel UK, Panini and PSS (a division of Penguin USA. Korky the Cat, Count Duckula, Lazarus Lemming, Inspector Gadget, Ace Ventura, Tails the Fox, The Loony and Tiny Toons are just a handful of the very many original and licensed characters he has drawn. With Writer John Gatehouse he self publishes some work under the Little Lemming Books imprint the latest of which is The Kaci Bell Mysteries. He recently completed work on Monster Hunters Unlimited a four book series for PSS. Samples of His work can be seen at - www.davewindett.com