Category: Short Stories

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