This is not the answer I was hoping for.
“It is the truth. If you did not want the truth, then you should not have asked.”
With this, you edge off of the wall and open a door next to you, one I didn’t detect before. A blazing illumination floods the grey corridor, and temporarily blinds me. Though it should by all rights roast the flesh from my bones, the light is cool, soothing, welcoming. The light feels like home.
What now?
“We are here.”
Where is here?
“The end of this life, and the beginning of the next in the everlasting cycle.”
Will I meet you again?
“Almost certainly,” you say, a note of affection in your voice.
I step through to another world.
Notes
First off, I have to thank all of the wonderful editors of the magazines, anthologies and literary journals who bought many of the stories in this collection over the past decade, and worked closely with me to make each piece better: Forrest Aguirre, Eric Marin, Marcy Smith, Salvatore W. Delle Palme, Carolyn Kellogg, Erzebet Carr, Carmelo Rafala, Wei Fen Lee, Travis Anderson, Rudi Dornemann, Luís Rodrigues, Michael Jasper, Darin Bradley, Amanda Lee Koe, John Klima, Matthew Kressel, Dave Bonta, Beth Adams, and Samuel Montgomery-Blinn. Also, thanks are due to superstar John Kessel for his unofficial mentorship during my undergraduate years, and his advisory role for my postgraduate degree in creative writing; as well as to the instructors of the 2002 Clarion Writers Workshop for championing short speculative fiction: Patricia C. Wrede, Terry Bisson, Leslie What, Geoff Ryman, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Karen Joy Fowler and Tim Powers.
And last, but definitely not least, I must thank Keith Brooke, for reprinting my third-ever published story back in 2005, in the original online incarnation of Infinity Plus, and for showing unswerving support for my writing in the years since; only a passionate nutter such as Keith would have thought bringing out three short fiction collections in two years by such a relative unknown as myself would be a good idea. I am forever grateful for his particular brand of insanity.
~
Some of the stories in Strange Mammals appeared originally, in slightly different form, in the following venues:
“Most Excellent and Lamentable,” Text:UR—The New Book of Masks, Raw Dog Screaming Press, March 2007
“The Artists Pentaptych,” Lone Star Stories no. 6, December 2004
“Avoirdupois,” The Raleigh News & Observer Sunday Reader, December 2006
“Strange Mammals,” Zouch Magazine, August 2011
“Screwhead,” Hot Metal Bridge no. 2, Fall 2007
“The Time Traveler’s Son,” Papaveria Press (limited edition standalone book), December 2008; The Immersion Book of Science Fiction, Immersion Press, September 2010
“King of Hearts,” Ceriph no. 6, Fall 2013
“One Big Crunch,” OPi8: New Dark Culture, July 2005
“Jimi and the Djinn,” The Daily Cabal, November 2008
“Night Off,” Fantastic Metropolis, December 2003
“Enlightenment,” Intracities, Unwrecked Press, October 2003
“Stuck,” Farrago’s Wainscot no. 7, July 2008
“TCB,” Microcosmos: Orbital Decay, studioKALEIDO Press, December 2012; Esquire Singapore, August 2013
“One Less,” Farrago’s Wainscot no. 2, April 2007
“Solipsister,” Electric Velocipede no. 9, Fall 2005
“Wombat Fishbone,” Sybil’s Garage no. 5, March 2008
“Air is Water is Air,” Ceriph no. 2, January 2011
“The Apokalypsis Pentaptych,” Qarrtsiluni, October-December 2008
“Complications of the Flesh,” Bull Spec no. 7, Spring 2012
About the Author
Jason Erik Lundberg was born in Brooklyn and has lived in Singapore since 2007. He is the author of nearly a dozen books, including the collections Red Dot Irreal and The Alchemy of Happiness (also available from Infinity Plus Books), as well as editor of The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume One and LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction.
Discover more works by the author at Jason Lundberg dot Net.
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