Category: Serials

Long-running or multi-part stories.

Tee-Time, Part 2: The Missing Links

A follow-on to my short story (vignette, really) Tea Time, both originally published on Ricochet.com:

They say in space nobody can hear you scream. It seems an odd thing to drop into conversation. They also say that in the boundless stars there are places that would give cosmographers and quantum physicists everywhere conniption fits simply by existing.

One of those stood below: It looked a little like a golf course, a grassy fairway in the stars, surrounded by strange trees rooted into the fabric of the cosmos where, of all things, figures that looked suspiciously like knights in armour (some of them wearing what looked suspiciously like plus-fours) were clanking around the fairway crying ‘Fore!’ You’ve got to have some sympathy for the poor academic physicists at times like this. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen.

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

Tee-Time, Part 1: Time for Tea

Another recent short story, originally published as ‘Tea Time’ over at Ricochet.com (I almost wish I’d thought to call this ‘Tee-Time’ to begin with (for reasons that will become apparent when you see the sequels), but que sera sera …

Things aren’t made the way they used to be. Take time: time used to have a much nicer quality than it does today. And light: when was the last time you got proper light? And something seemed to have happened to all the spaces, like they’d been … sort of shrunk down and actual space taken out of them … So it really wasn’t his fault when he stopped time.

He was trying to build time machine, okay? Never mind why. He had his reasons. He hadn’t meant to rip a hole in the fabric of causality. He just wanted to go back and make things right. Instead of just having them seem to go more and more wrong. And now there was a gaping lapis-edged void twinkling with stars and infinite blackness facing him from across the workshop, and he couldn’t get to the kettle or the sink. Never travel through time without a cup of tea – he thought he’d read that somewhere. Or else the thought had occurred to him in one of those times in the wee small hours, when the world is all your own. The other thing, of course, was that there was … like a “time ghost” blocking his way.

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

Once Upon a Spinning-Wheel (Part 7): Lure of the Lava Lady

As seen on Ricochet.com here, part 7 of an ongoing serial:

On an island far away, the mwahaha flies.

The mwahaha is a bird – not, funnily enough, so called because its cry resembles the laugh of an old-fashioned villain, twirling his moustache as the express train draws near – but just out of sheer soppy sentimentality. There used to be a thriving colony of them somewhere up around old Hollywood way, back in the “real” world. People keep hoping they might come back someday, but, sad to tell, no one in living memory can remember seeing an active colony of mwahahas. Like the dodo, they have passed into the mists of history …

… Except, here, where one watched with curiosity from the branches of a flowering tree, on the slopes of the volcano. It was watching a curious assemblage running towards it. A man, who seemed faintly luminescent, carrying a beautiful young lady in his arms, apparently unslowed by shifting rocky ground or jungle scrub, or even by running straight uphill. On his shoulder, a parrot was squawking encouragement. Behind them, masked warriors flung spears, darts, and arrows while giving chase. It’s a strange world, sometimes, the mwahaha thought, and fluttered off. Some ancient instinct warned it what might lie ahead …

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Posted on by Andrew Miller

Once Upon a Spinning-Wheel (Part 5): The Limey and the Coconut

I lay back in the firelight and tried not to be sick. Which wasn’t easy. Nessa had conspired to get me to a “medicine woman” – which seemed to be a polite way of saying “witch doctress”. When I’d tried to point this out, Nessa had shushed me with a well-placed elbow to the stomach. It doesn’t pay to offend the only person with a knowledge of magic and potions for miles around.

The medicine woman wore a carved painted mask with red curving lips and big stylised uptilted eyes. It looked disturbingly feminine. And the way she looked at me through the slitted eyeholes was plain disconcerting. Hungry, almost … She swayed about the place like someone who was used to not hobbling around in baggy robes and stirring potions over smoky indoor fires, and I couldn’t work out why that was bothering me.

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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

Once Upon a Spinning-Wheel, Part 1: The Serpent’s Kiss

Part 1 of a story I published over at Ricochet.com, Once Upon a Spinning-Wheel (Part 1) — The Serpent’s Kiss:

‘Won’t hurt a bit,’ she says, ‘just a little prick.’ Sure. Because that’s always been true. Except this time it’s a magical spinning-wheel, and no lollipops for good boys and girls. Evil fairies running amok, and I was just about ready to pass out after cutting my finger on that confounded spindle. My name’s— well that’s not important right now — welcome to my life — this kind of thing happens to me all the time. Except everyone was trying to kill me — long story, they thought I was responsible for— Anyway, no time now, guards are coming. Why hadn’t they fallen asleep, and the kingdom with them, you ask? Well, funny thing, when I get hit by an evil enchantment I tend to grab the nearest heavy object and smash the evil magic spinning-wheel to pieces. But that’s just me. So the enchantment was short-circuited — and short-circuiting — and I wasn’t feeling at all well. No matter, no matter, think … think. Got to be something else I can do, something else I need to do. Well, aside from hiding behind this tapestry … with a secret passage behind it. Interesting … Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, and in case it’s not clear, I’m not a princess (maybe that’s why the spinning-wheel hadn’t sent me to sleep for a hundred years that instant), I’m a guy — and the girl I’m in love with is probably going to marry someone else whether or not I can break this enchant— There was an echoing clang, as of a mop bucket which some idiot has kicked, rolling down the stairs.

So, the secret passage turns out to be a janitor’s closet, or something, and that clang was going to attract some attention — or would do if everyone wasn’t making too much noise looking for me as it was. Small mercies. But do janitors’ closets usually have a spiral stone staircase leading down from them? I would say not, but I haven’t been in all that many. Look, I went to knight school, all right? Graduated knight school, anyway — but that’s not important right now. Look, it’s not as if I even started life in this fairy tale, okay? I know it sounds unlikely, but I just sort of … woke up here. I don’t know what happened. One minute everyone was normal, next minute it’s this weird sugar-spun world where nothing makes any sense anymore. I thought things made sense again, a little, for a while … Hey, do you mind looking the other way a moment — intruding on private grief here! Thank you! Anyway, where were we again? It sure was dark down this staircase. I hope I didn’t fall and kick the bucket — again.

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Posted on by Andrew Miller