The last year has been a big one for me in terms of reevaluating how I approach my writing career. One of the decisions I’ve come to is a desire to have my fiction out there in the world more often, whether or not I’m being paid for it. For a while, my approach has been to only publish my work through traditional means, which for me has meant when I will be paid a professional rate for doing so (That’s $0.06/word at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s current rate). But guess what? There aren’t that many SFWA-qualifying markets out there, and it’s limiting to my own career goals to grow my body of work online only on the very rare occasion that I have a story published traditionally. A writer without readers is like a mermaid without gills — I need you to breathe.
I could go on, but suffice it to say I will now be participating, both here and at other locations, in providing free fiction for you more often. And I’ll start today, while these three short stories are still in season! They were written for a contest that Apex Magazine, one of those SFWA-qualifying markets, ran earlier this month. The rules were 250-word speculative fiction stories with the theme of Christmas Invasion. None of mine were selected as winners — someday, I’ll crack into you, Apex, someday! — but I think they’re pretty entertaining, so much so that I wanted to read them for you too. Take your pick of the written or spoken word and bring a little silly merriment into your holiday cheer.
1. Hostess Gifts
(in which my true feelings about a certain holiday plant are made known)
Photo from She Knows.Com
A shower of identical snowflakes dusts the windows, signaling the attack. Poinsettias throughout North America rustle leaves in a strange sort of fan dance. These festively colored vessels have been chosen for their unobtrusiveness; humans show a fondness for the plants during their most vulnerable months yet pay them scant attention, leaving them to gather dust by windowsills.
The plants dip in agreement, and the spores that control them reconfigure their atoms into solid slicks of translucent, metallic coating. Pointed tips transform into needles sharp as any tungsten. Leaf edges rust, mimicking decay.
Roused from their beds by weak winter light, the humans wake to a moldy smell. Sleepy glances cast blame on the Christmas trees, but no, they are new, fresh, still drinking their water. Aha! Millions of eyes fall upon forgotten poinsettias shrunken down in their paper-wrapped pots. The plants appear brittle rather than limp from rot, but these humans do not note the difference.
The spores lunge fast as they are lifted into the air, knowing trash cans are never far. Pinprick cuts expel poison into their marks. By lunch, two-thirds of the continent’s people lie dead on their floors beside harmless, blood-red poinsettias and pools of spilled soil.
The rest of the humans will be spared, having proven themselves by resisting the impulse purchases. Their demonstrated common sense and good taste indicate they will make excellent hosts, as soon as they venture close enough to pick up their uninvited guests.
2. How Tradition Lost Its Tang
(in which I muse over the clash of food cultures)
Dig in…if you dare.
“Yogurt and açai berry, so much healthier than cranberry. And the antioxidants? On fleek.” Patrick, Colinda’s great nephew, slides an unearthly pile of mulberry-colored goo onto the table beside the stuffing.
She has the grace to say, “Thank you, honey. I’m sure it’s delicious,” but remembers him once eating two cans of cranberry all by himself.
A large bowl of tiny leaves appears next.
“Micro-kale,” her grandbaby Jada explains. “With fermented barley flakes. It’s nourishing on a whole new plane, Gram.”
Colinda dutifully tries a pinch. Sawdust. “I’ll put it right—”
“Oh my god, is that one of those clove juice vapes?” Jada squeals.
Patrick is playing with some walkie-talkie-looking contraption. “Wanna try it out back?”
Neither’ll eat her turkey anymore, but it’s nice they get along.
#
Once everyone has arrived, Colinda goes to fetch the kids. Deep in conversation, they don’t notice her approach. She likewise doesn’t notice the matching green ridges that run straight from their foreheads to their chins, frilled like the edges of that kale, until she’s close. Too close.
Colinda gasps. Shock roots her in place as Jada presses a spiked fingertip into her skin—
—and Colinda’s eyes open to the whole family seated around the table, staring. She colors. Must have dozed off again. Cooking takes so much more out of her these days.
“Well, what are y’all looking at? Dig in.”
The turkey tastes like dirt, and the collards? Swampwater. But the kids’ dishes? Colinda has seconds and licks the plate.
3. Unwrapped
(for which I must define the word apportation: The paranormal transference of an article from one place to another, or an appearance of an article from an unknown source)
Danger lurks in many packages.
Anxiety latches onto Leah at her extremities. The Veil of Occlusion lies discarded beneath the dining table. She lunges for it, but sometimes four feet away are three too far. Panic pulses through her body, the morning’s aftermath crowding her senses. Frosted pastel and bold red-and-green wrapping papers mosaic the floor beneath her impeccably decorated tree. Flattened metallic bows lie between ribbon curls that had contained all this…this chaos…an hour ago.
Leah breathes deeply, but the air feels too thin, too little to stem the flow of her apportation. Torn boxes multiply, covering the freshly wiped table she’d never wanted. She hadn’t wanted any of it—not the late-night cries, the snotty noses, the plaintive demands of “Mommy, I can’t sleep” that infiltrate even that remnant of solitude.
Packages pile higher, forming Jenga towers of waste. They press in on her, and she searches for an exit. Slashed snowmen and reindeer prints assail every inch of her vision, spreading faster than kudzu. Leah screams.
Slipper-clad footfalls run down the hall, and something tugs at her skirt.
“Mommy? Mommy, stop!”
She disgorges the words of the disintegration spell and her children duck for cover. Presents poof into a penumbra of dust, leaving a mess, an utter mess, worse than before. Leah gulps loud breaths through her fingers.
“Veil, Mommy?” The youngest offers it up with a fear-laced whisper.
Leah slides the elaborate headpiece of miniscule, filigreed rings over her frizzled hair. The cool, black void it brings is utter bliss.
—–
I hope you enjoyed those little distractions! In February, I will be participating in Rob Kristoffersen’s One-Word Story Project challenge, and you’ll hear a little more about that from me before it begins in January. I’m also on the books to write a new romance short story for the CleanReads.Com newsletter in April, my publisher for Maya’s Vacation. I’m quite excited for that, as I haven’t dusted off the romance muscles in a while. Will it be contemporary? Fantasy? Humor? I have absolutely no idea yet.
