Month: November 2019

Hokey Croaky

One froggy evening, there was a bit of a to-do … (Originally written for and published over at Ricochet.com):

Hokey Croaky:

Ripples spread out across the surface of the lagoon, sparkling in the starlight, as the girl surfaced from under the water. Trailing behind her, there bobbed up a coloured glass lantern, sealed around the edges with a grey, clayey substance. Well, this dress has probably seen its last dance, she thought as she swam for the shore. The lantern came floating along with her. 

In the distance, coloured lights glowed and strange music played out across the night. The dance goes on, as they say. Carefully, she lifted the lantern out of the water and hauled herself up onto the rocks. There was a kind of dull tap on the glass. A frog peered out at her. It was a bit hard to see through the coloured glass, but something about its eyes and the way it looked at her was somehow … human. She scraped away some of the clay with her nails and twisted. ‘Alright, buddy,’ she said, her voice coming out as a hoarse whisper, ‘you want to explain what’s going on?’

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

Sun-Struck

Myths and legends come to life in this short story, originally written for Ricochet.com:

Sun-Struck:

He woke to the sound of distant music, a gentle sea breeze washing over him from somewhere. He heard the creak of timbers around him. Where am I this time, he found himself thinking. He seemed to be in a low wooden room, decorated with carvings, but otherwise empty. The carvings were . . . strange: Mermaids singing, maps like something out of an old storybook, and smiling young ladies with . . . banjos? He shook his head, walking out onto the main deck. As his eyes got used to the bright sunlight, he saw that he wasn’t alone.

There was a man — weathered and dressed in rags, his long white beard trailing down over the deck — tied to the mast and fast asleep. The ship around him apparently wasn’t in great shape. There were areas of broken woodwork, as if some huge monster had smashed through them. Through one of these he could see the ship’s wheel, lashed into position. Off to one side, there was an island on the horizon. He was no sailor, but as best he could tell, the ship was going round in circles. ‘Well?’ said a voice as old as the sea. ‘Don’t just stand there — untie me, confound it! I want to see what that music’s all about!’

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

Lightbulb Moment

A wee vignette, originally written for Ricochet.com:

Lightbulb Moment:

We were sitting on wooden crates. They must have been sculling around in this old cargo hold for decades. Longer. It was an elephants’ graveyard of discarded technology, goods that had long since ceased being traded (at least in this corner of the universe). We pried open the lid on one, carefully. Inside, packed among musty, but still-dry, straw and shredded newspaper was a lamp. ‘Hey, this is solid brass,’ said Maya.

There were even some smaller crates inside. I opened one up. Inside were disintegrating pasteboard boxes.

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

Witch Way

A magical cat-and-dog story (sort of) — originally written for and published at Ricochet.com:

Witch Way:

It was raining, cats and dogs (well, a witch’s cat and a sort-of werewolf with bones for brains – she really shouldn’t say that, even in the privacy of her own thoughts, but bless him it was true) were taking cover, and she still had to finish this blasted potion. Never, never, never, the dripping young woman thought to herself, brew a potion from a recipe book that actually specifies it be made ‘on ae righte blasted heathe on ye first true dark midnight after th’ full moone, and thatte at the height of ae summer storme’.

But here she was, soaked to the skin and getting more and more drenched by the moment, frantically stirring a bubbling cauldron with a long hazel stick (‘exactlie five foote in lengthe’), as the wind blew against her trailing black cloak and threatened to take her with it. She’d already seen her hat go whistling away over the horizon. ‘I tried to tell you,’ said a voice from under a pair of wet, flattened-down ears somewhere in the undergrowth.

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

Time Enough

An ending and a beginning in this short, originally written for and published over at Ricochet.com:

Time Enough:

The air shimmered and a young woman stumbled forward out of what a moment before had been thin air. As she got back up, dusting red dirt off her jeans, the setting sun glinted off the scythe-shaped silver pin on her lapel. She looked around, running a hand through her hair. Floating by the crossroads, looking up at a warped old signpost, was the figure of a man, glowing semi-translucent and slightly blue. She looked around again. No body. That was odd for a start.

He turned at the sound of her walking towards him. She saw the confusion and the pain – felt them flash through her, as if they were her own – saw the glistening of tears. She kept going, taking in details as she went. Young. About her age. Features? Hard to tell when people were like this. And pain. Worlds and worlds of pain. ‘Hey there, honey,’ she said, as gently as possible, extending a hand to him. ‘My name’s Clancy. You … look a little lost …’ She paused a moment. ‘I know this place down the road a ways – they do these great chocolate malts. You look like you could use one … My treat?’

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

Bell Ringer

An Arthurian tale this time, originally published on Ricochet.com:

Bell Ringer:

They had such strange flowers here, ‘Arthur-lies-sleeping’, what sort of name was that for a flower? And ‘Cadbury bells’ and, he sneezed past his streaming eyes, something in the hedgerows that was giving him hay fever. He never got hay fever … That must have been what made him miss the rock: He stumbled, rolling down, down into the gully into a surprisingly deep, almost little valley, hitting his head on something as he landed. Hey, who turned out the lights?

By the time he woke up, it was getting dark. He was miles from anywhere; though for some reason, he couldn’t actually remember where or even who he was, which was just stupid. Ahead of him, was a rough doorway in the side of the hill. Which was even sillier, you didn’t get doorways in the sides of hills. There was a light coming from somewhere inside this one, though, and a subtle ringing note that seemed to echo inside his head. Or maybe that was just his skull. Here went nothing …

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

Midnight Hours

A short vignette I wrote called ‘Midnight Hours‘, originally published on Ricochet.com:

‘Nurse! … Nurse!’ Footsteps ran towards the sound of the screaming. A door was flung open, the light from the hallway falling on the man in the bed. ‘Where’s the rest of me!’

The nurse sighed and, businesslike, stepped forward, flinging the covers back. ‘Right where I left it the last four times,’ she said. ‘I told you, the anaesthetic takes a while to wear off.’

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

A Valhallan Interlude, Part 2: A Need for Mead

A Valhallan Interlude — A Need for Mead, part 2 of a story I wrote originally published on Ricochet.com:

The horse touched down lightly in the dust near the parking lot. ‘I still don’t think this is a good idea,’ he said. Not many horses talk; then again, not many horses fly, so they probably broke even there. He looked up apprehensively at the storm clouds racing rapidly towards them across the night sky.

The girl riding on the horse’s back didn’t seem to notice them as he trotted towards the entrance. She tried to dismount. There was the sound that a suit of brass outer garments makes when it drops from a height with a girl in it. ‘Ow …’ said the girl from the ground. She found herself gazing at the big flashing neon sign on top of the bar. ‘Who calls a bar Rolling Thunder?’ she asked.

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

A Valhallan Interlude (Part 1):

Part 1 of a story I wrote published at Ricochet.com:

‘Hoy-at-a-ho! … Hoy-a-ta-ho! …’ The voice echoed across the rooftops. The horse galloping its way across the night sky was clearly not of this world. Nor was the brass-clad young lady riding along on its back. However … well, it’s all very well singing in the moonlight like that, and she had a good voice for it, but she’d just never been able to get the proper … operatic feel for things. 

‘That wasn’t bad,’ said the horse. 

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

Once Upon a Spinning-Wheel (Part II): A Hiss in the Dark

Once Upon a Spinning-Wheel — A Hiss in the Dark, part 2 of a story I published over at Ricochet.com:

I could count the number of times that I’d fallen to my death on the fingers of one hand (which was still bleeding after cutting it open on that blasted spinning-wheel) — but the number of times something like this had happened to me … well, I was running out of fingers … Although at least they were all still attached to me, there was that. Always look on the bright side of life, that’s me — nameless hero, courageously fighting against the odds, grappling with beautiful yet oddly creepy snake-women sorceresses (all right, one sorceress, and she threw me off a tower, but still), bravely eluding capture by guards that should have been thrown out of knight school or, preferably, out that tower window instead of me, and not to mention — erm, well, this is kind of embarrassing, but I think I may have been at least slightly dead for a moment there. Sure, all the cool kids end up “mostly dead,” before storming back to whatever glorious future awaits them — me, slightly dead. And maybe all dead, if I didn’t figure a way out of it. It was like this:

… I remember falling … and then blackness, endless blackness mixed with ripples of green light cascading over my vision. That enchantress must have laid a heck of a curse on me as I was going down. Super strength and sorcery? Something was afoot, and no mistake. Plus, I didn’t like the way she kept smiling at me when she was torturing and half killing me to death. I’m funny that way. Anyway, there I was, floating in blackness and slow-motion green strobe lighting when … I suddenly wasn’t there at all. And I kept thinking back to that kiss. Who blows a kiss to someone as they’re throwing them off a tower? Especially after making with the voodoo mojo and magic spells and whatnot. I shuddered in the nothingness that I was struggling for existence in and —

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Posted on by Andrew Miller