Stupefying Stories Magazine

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Six Questions for… Carol Scheina

By ~brb November 19, 2024 3 comments

Carol Scheina is a deaf speculative author whose stories have appeared in publications such as Flash Fiction Online, Escape Pod, Diabolical Plots, Stupefying Stories, and others. Her writing has been recognized on the Wigleaf Top 50 Short Fiction Longlist, and she has become a fan favorite here for her finely crafted flash fiction pieces on the Stupefying Stories website. You can find more of her work at carolscheina.wordpress.com.

What we haven’t mentioned much is how crucial Carol has been behind the scenes here, for all her help with The Pete Wood Challenge, The Odin Chronicles, and Tales from the Brahma. Therefore, this seemed like a good time to catch up with Carol and ask her our usual batch of half-serious, half-silly questions, and point you towards some of her stories on our site.

§ § §

SS: What is the first SF/F book or story you remember reading?

CS: My parents let me read whatever was on their bookshelves, and when I was five, my eyes gazed at books by Ian Fleming and James Clavell… King Rat sounded like such an interesting title, but all the long words clumped together in a tiny rat-sized font, so I put that one back. (Now that I know the subject matter of that book, I’m rather glad I didn’t read it at age five!)

I discovered a book that was easy to read for my young eyes and had lovely illustrations to boot: The Tin Woodman of Oz. It was an old paperback book with a musty smell behind its bright yellow cover. In those pages, I followed the adventures of the Tin Woodman over and over.

Eventually, my parents took me to the library so I could give the old Tin Woodman book a rest before I read it to pieces. On the library bookshelves, I found other books in the Oz series, and as I grew older, I jumped into stories by Madeline L’Engle and Robin McKinley. There were always new magical worlds to visit.

I’ve never stopped reading fantasy, and I’ve been known to return to those old books that captured my young imagination. On my bookshelf now rests my parent’s copy of The Tin Woodman, and the musty pages still bring a smile to my face.

SS: When you write a new story, are you a plotter or a pantser?

CS: I generally consider myself a panster. I like to start out every story with a plan, and I handwrite outlines and ideas in a notebook. I even scribble out rough first drafts so when I sit down in front of a computer, I can start typing right away.

In the process of typing, I’ll get ideas on how to make the story better, and I veer more into pantser territory. The ending will change, or I’ll figure out a really neat twist that I want to incorporate. But I can’t get to that point without a plan to get me started in the first place.

SS: What is your favorite beverage to drink while writing?

CS: I’m a tea drinker, and every morning, I brew a pot. Then I may brew another pot in the afternoon. Not surprisingly, I always need to work near a bathroom. Still, there’s something wonderfully relaxing about writing with a steaming cup of tea with sugar and milk nearby.

SS: How do you balance writing vs having a life?

CS: I have young kids, and I love watching them grow and discover their passions. Because my kids take top priority, I look for the moments in-between their adventures, and that’s where I find my writing time. Maybe it’s in the time spent waiting for my child to race at the swim team meet, or in the hour-long drive to an activity. It may be five minutes here, 30 minutes there. I always have a little notebook and pen with me so I can scribble story notes and ideas no matter where I am. Then there’s that glorious hour between 9 p.m. and midnight, when I can be found typing the story up.

SS: What feels like your best natural length for a story?

CS: I’m very partial to flash fiction, which is funny because my earliest attempts at writing fiction were novels. I started my fiction journey with National November Writing Month, progressed to short stories, then to flash. At first, it was my lack of time that drew me to writing shorter, but I quickly realized that shorter isn’t faster or easier! My first attempt at flash ended up being 5,000 words long.

I kept trying my hand at flash, though, as it was one of my goals to be published in Daily Science Fiction. Once I met that goal, I found that I really enjoyed the challenge of writing flash fiction and kept at it. It now feels like my most comfortable story length.

I also feel like it’s made me a better writer. It’s taught me to look at word choices closely, whether side plots are actually beneficial, and how to identify the heart of the story, among other things.

SS: Is there an author whose work you think has been unfairly overlooked or forgotten?

CS: I feel like the authors of short stories need more exposure, and I’m not just saying that as a short story author myself. There are speculative writers experimenting with stories and genres in ways you don’t see with novel-length stories, and I’m continually finding myself blown away by the talent out there.

One of the first flash fiction rock stars I followed was Melissa Mead, who was a frequent contributor to Daily Science Fiction and has also been published here at Stupefying Stories. She twisted fairy tales and tackled sci-fi concepts with wit and imagination. I’d read her stories and think, “Dang, I want to write like her.” Melissa passed away in 2022, but her stories still live on to entertain us. I highly recommend going to the Daily Science Fiction website and searching for Melissa Mead. There’s a treasure trove of her tales there!

§ § §

Speaking of a treasure trove, in preparing this profile for publication we decided to put together a short list of Carol’s stories on this site, and were genuinely surprised by just how many there are. Rather than a short list, then, here’s every (we think) story by Carol Scheina we’ve published in the past three years.

If you read nothing else by Carol, read this:

“Exploring Strange New Worlds with a Hearing Loss”

Our favorite fiction by Carol

“How to Return an Overdue Book to the Summer Library”

“The View from the Old Ship”

“True Love is Found in the Bone Sea”

“Of Myths, Legends, and Parenthood”

“The Disappearing Cat Trick”

“Monthly Magic Subscription Box”

“Inheritance”

Pete Wood Challenge Stories

“Would You Like Fries With That?”

“Long-Distance Relationship”

“The Family Business”

“Just Like Before”

“The Secret to a Happy Marriage”

“Clowning Around”

“Secondhand Hugs Still Have All the Warmth”

“The Difficulty of Disembarking”

“To Boldly Go”

“For Sale: Used Time Machine. No Refunds!”

“The Santa Heist”

“Don’t Ignore Your Television’s Captioning”

“A Conversation Held at the Annual Meeting of the National Association of Butler Assassins”

“Proper Witch’s Home”

Tales from The Brahma Stories

“A Palette of Home”

“Just Like Mama Made”

The Odin Chronicles Stories

“Delayed Messages”

“Love and Groceries”

“The One Who Walks Out”

“The Disappearing Cat Trick”

“An Infestation in the Mines”

“A Time to Wait”

“The Same Bratwurst Every Day”

The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link.

REMINDER: There is another Pete Wood Challenge that is open for submissions right now. For details and how to enter, click this link.

MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 15: IS NASA Doing It???

By GuyStewart November 18, 2024 No comments

Initially, I started this series because of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…HOWEVER, as time passed, I knew that this was a subject I was going to explore because it interests me…

In a recent video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvCSZHfjmZ4, NASA ASU Professor and Asteroid Scientist, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, gives a pretty firm and unambiguous answer: “No NASA is not mining asteroids…” BUT… “What NASA is doing is fundamental science, research missions that go out to the asteroids and try and understand more about them and they will help any eventual future efforts to mine the asteroids. We ARE going to go visit an asteroid we think is made largely of metal.”

So, the answer Dr. Elkins-Tanton gives is clear and unambiguous.

“Or,” (as my granddaughter and grandson are fond of saying), “IS it???”

The NASA mission to Psyche, the metal asteroid they’re targeting, is set to launch on October 10, 2023 for the Psyche orbiter to launch and get to the asteroid by August 2029. But is that realistic? Anyone reading this KNOWS how NASA sets it sights, budgets bloom, Congress gets antsy with repeated requests for “more funding” and eventually a good idea gets buried – especially since we no longer have anyone breathing down our neck.

“Or,” (as my granddaughter and grandson are fond of saying), “do we???”

China’s efforts at asteroid mining, while typically wrapped in layers of secrecy about specific facts and technology, this article from SKN News in September of 2020: (St. Kitts and Nevis, east of the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) ran nothing but this headline: “China to send first-ever ‘asteroid mining robot’ into space this November” (https://sknnews.com/world-news/china-to-send-first-ever-asteroid-mining-robot-into-space-this-november-42276979/)

That’s it. Nothing else. No story, no nothing.

But digging around deeper, I found this: “The SuperView Neo 1-01 & 02 satellites were designed and manufactured by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) for China Siwei Survey and Mapping Technology Co. Ltd. (China Siwei), a leading company providing geospatial information services in China…Neo constellation will include at least 28 satellites of 3 series. The first one is called SuperView Neo-1 and it aims to provide 20 to 30 cm optical images. SuperView Neo-2 will produce synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) images with 50 cm resolution in spotlight mode, whereas SuperView Neo-3 will acquire large swath-width optical images with resolution higher than 1 meter. On this mission, two satellites of the first series (SuperView Neo-1) were launched. These satellites have a mass of 540 kg each, with resolution down to 0.3 meters.” (https://everydayastronaut.com/superview-neo-1-01-02-long-march-2c/)

In an article dated September 2020, India News (https://www.mining-technology.com/news/origin-space-launch-mining-robot-space/) reported: “As part of this mission, Origin Space will use a small satellite called NEO-1, weighing nearly 30kg…NEO-1 will be launched as a secondary payload by a China-made Long March series rocket. The launch of NEO-1 will mark the ‘first steps’ taken towards testing capabilities as part of efforts to detect and extract space resources. India Today quoted Origin Space co-founder Yu Tianhong as stating: ‘The goal is to verify and demonstrate multiple functions such as spacecraft orbital manoeuvre, simulated small celestial body capture, intelligent spacecraft identification and control.’ The long-term objective of the space company is to develop rare-earth metals and mineral resources from near-Earth asteroids.”

So…China launched NEO-1 and NEO-2: “The NEO-01, developed by Nanjing-based Origin Space Technology Co, which claims to be the first Chinese company dedicated to exploring and utilizing space resources, was launched on a Long March 6 rocket for space debris removal and asteroids mining experiments in deep space in April 2021…the robot prototype completed an experiment of using a large net to capture space debris and the relative technique verification in key steps, which is the first commercial company in the world to complete such an experiment.” (https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202211/1279404.shtml)

So the race has begun – not between the defunct Soviet Union; nor the ineffective regime currently in the Kremlin, mired down in a war that was supposed to last weeks, but has stretched into eighteen months of slogging push and shove with absolutely nothing to show for it as it rapidly descends into a punchline for a joke...

First soldier: “Russia is second most powerful military nation…”
Second soldier: “Da, in Ukraine.”

but between the US and China; and right now, it seems that China might have more enthusiasm than we do… “Or,” (as my granddaughter and grandson are fond of saying), “do they???”

New Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvCSZHfjmZ4
Fundamental Resource: (A general Wikipedia post detailing what the authors currently know about asteroid mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining)
Noted Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroid_close_approaches_to_Earth, https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_7fcd3ea5-3c14-533f-a8d5-9bf629922f34.html, https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/29/like-asteroid-mining-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/, https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/learn/historyculture/theroadtothefirstflight.htm, https://hackaday.com/2019/03/27/extraterrestrial-excavation-digging-holes-on-other-worlds/, https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/every-small-worlds-mission
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg

Six Questions for… Gretchen Tessmer

By ~brb November 12, 2024 No comments

Gretchen Tessmer lives in the deep woods of the U.S./Canadian borderlands. Her short stories and poems have been published in many places, including Nature, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Bourbon Penn, and Fantasy & Science Fiction (and Stupefying Stories, of course!).

Gretchen’s poetry has been nominated for Rhysling, Dwarf Stars, Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, and she recently edited Eye to the Telescope 53, on the theme of “Strange Mixology,” which, in her completely biased opinion, is wonderful and you should read it, too.

Gretchen is a relative newcomer to Stupefying Stories, who came in here (as so many new writers do) by way of the Pete Wood Challenge, with “Two All-Meat Zombies,” “My Fair Claritin Lady,” and the gold-medal winning story from which we lifted the above illustration, “Ivy’s Tower.”

Recently we had the chance to catch up with Gretchen, and ask her our usual batch of half-silly, half-serious questions.

§ § §

SS: What is the first SF/F book or story you remember reading?

GT: I’ll give you two, one from my sci-fi shelf and the other from fantasy. So in third grade, when they first gave us library cards, I went straight for A Wrinkle in Time. No idea why. Loved the names Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, even if I didn’t really understand anything of what those eccentric old ladies were saying. Loved Meg and Cal and Charles Wallace. Had almost zero idea of what was going on plot-wise because I was eight years old and it was about four years beyond my reading comprehension. But I revisited it later and it was wonderful. Still one of my favorites.

First fantasy was The Magician’s Nephew, and I stand by the opinion that it’s the best (if most overlooked) of the Narnia books. The Pevensie children are great, but Polly and Digory are so much better. And there's a wood between worlds, and pond portals, and magic rings, and crazy Uncle Andrew, and crazier Jadis, and the deplorable word, and the friendly cabby and his wife, and Fledge the Pegasus formerly known as Strawberry, and…

SS: Of everything you’ve had published, which book or story of yours is the one you are most proud of? Where can readers find it?

GT: I’m very happy with “Oslo in the Summertime,” which was published in Bourbon Penn 29. I'm also proud of “See You On the Other Side,” which originally appeared at The Arcanist but was recently republished in Small Wonders, because time travel is tricky and I think I (almost) pulled it off. To be honest, my mini-zombie story (“Two All-Meat Zombies”) and my outpost story (“Ivy’s Tower”) here at Stupefying Stories are a good sampling of my work, even at under 100 words, because I think they succinctly show the two sides of my preferred storytelling.

For poems, I’ll choose “Hey Man, Nice Shot,” at Strange Horizons. Yes, both “Oslo in the Summertime” and “Hey Man, Nice Shot” are shamelessly stolen (ahem, borrowed) from song titles. But, in my defense, they are both really good songs.

SS: Is there one story you’ve published that you wish you could call back and make disappear?

GT: Haha, not really. I mean, some of my early poems are ridiculously melodramatic (but most of those are hidden away in old college magazines and I’m not telling which) and yeah, I think we all look back and cringe at old habits sometimes. But the older I get, the more I find myself cutting the younger writer-girl-me slack and just enjoying the growth and change in my style. And because I’ve been publishing poetry consistently-ish since I was 18 and I’m now approaching [redacted for extra mysteriousness], the poems act as little bread crumbs of my life events and memories through the years, some lovely, some painful, but I really don’t think I'd want to lose any of them.

SS: If you had a theme song that played every time you came into a room, what would it be?

GT: “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” by Cake. Except that I’d never change my name from Kitty to Karen and my voice isn’t as dark as tinted glass. But my fingernails definitely shine like justice.

SS: If you could have just one mutant superpower, what would it be?

GT: I’ll take whatever superpower makes having all the other superpowers superfluous. The old-time Elder magic, the Tom Bombadil and Goldberry style of living, where you’re in the story but not part of it. Where you just hang out on the porch steps in the lazy afternoon, drinking tea or smoking a pipe, and going “hmm, I wonder what’s up with those storm clouds around Isengard?” When you can flip the One Ring into the air, make it disappear, make it reappear and spin it on the kitchen table with a long-suffering sigh, you’ve won the game. So yes. Baking pies, singing songs, tending gardens, washing dishes, and scolding willow trees who wake up too early. This is the life for me.

SS: If you could snap your fingers and make one cliché, trope, or plot gimmick vanish, which one would it be?

GT: The Jon Snow of it all (I just don’t like obvious chosen ones)…unless he turns out to be an actual nobody (or alternatively, Meera Reed ends up as his secret twin and the true chosen one all along), in which case, that could work for me.

§ § §

Challenge #36 has been issued! The deadline to enter is December 1st! To learn what the challenge is this time and how to enter the contest, click this link.

“Monkey See” • by Chana Kohl

By ~brb November 11, 2024 2 comments

You do not fear what you can not see, so I shut my eyes and see no evil. In my mind’s field of vision instead: a single, coral rose, remarkably bright against the darkness. The petals undulate in an endless spiral, inviting me to delve in its perfect asymmetry.

Not physically in front of me, fragrance fills my mind with suggestion. A field of meadow honey, damp moss, green tea…and banana? Maybe I’m hungry.

I open my eyes.

Inside a stark, MRI chamber, engulfed by cold, harsh chirping, my head is enclosed in a helmet and suction-clamped to a vibrating bed. A touch screen shows a ball, an apple, a flower, a tree. If only I could articulate what my mind perceives: infinite…indiscernible…beauty.

I touch the flower.

‘Your mind’s not playing tricks, Sazerac.’

Cristal’s thoughts waft, faint but clear, like an ocean breeze, ‘I do smell banana.’ In a study room across the hall, my fellow simian presses a rose to his nostrils and inhales, ‘These top notes are delightfully tropical.’

‘Try not to project your thoughts using words,’ I remind him. ‘It might confound his results.’

‘And what do you care if it does??’ My partner’s impatience snowballs each day, ‘The nude-skin hasn’t the faintest clue what he’s toying with!’

The experiments at the Quantum Neurophysics Institute were the brainchild of Dr. Anton Duperré. In a daring assertion of quantum information theory, he theorized that direct communication between sentient minds was possible if their oscillations, specifically their delta waves, were entangled. Although the implantation of the ‘quantum trigger’ he designed would be unethical in humans, nonhuman primates were a different story.

What Duperré never imagined was the height of telepathic rigor and intelligence our minds would attain as a result. Not only do Cristal and I teleport our thoughts, we can readily transceive emotions, memories, and insight from any sentient creature within proximity.

When Cristal and I return to our cages, Lenka, a negative control subject, lies in a corner. The mock implant inside her skull isn’t meant to work, but we feel her excruciating agony. Her labored breaths require medical attention but Duperré doesn’t heed our warning screeches.

‘Tell boss you think Lenka perfect, like you…then maybe he treat me nice.’ She clings to a toy crocodile. ‘It give me great pleasure.’ Soon she dreams of muddy streams and crooked trees.

By morning, Lenka’s dead.

‘It’s time to face facts, Sazerac,’ Cristal’s fury slams cold against my head, ‘We’re not getting out of this place alive!’

Maybe I’m the deluded one. Believing we were partners with the humans, dreaming our sacrifices would some day, somehow, grant us the means to speak. I watch as Lenka’s body is callously removed from her cage, and I know the humans to whom we’re yoked are incapable of even considering the possibility.

‘So what do we do?’

The attendant in charge of our enrichment doesn’t notice how we watch him now, study his movements, wait for opportunity. Cristal distracts him with loud pant-hoots while I unhook the bright, yellow key from his belt. The master. The one required to open, but not close, every padlock in Duperré’s lab.

Nobody said it would be easy, but Sweet Mercy…it’s as if the nude-skins wish for us to escape.

Back in our cages, we plan. Cristal suggests we wait for night and the change of shift.

I agree, but there’s something I must do first.

I climb through the open window in Duperré's office, a room I’ve seen a thousand times in his mind. I stare at the bottles of amber liquid in their glass cupboard and move closer to discover for myself the courage and comfort stored inside. Instead, I see his reflection, staring back at me.

He’s surprised, offended even, that I’m there. “What do we have here?” Clearly, a rhetorical question. “How did you manage to escape?” Followed by an obtuse one.

Across the small room, we track each other, maintaining eye contact and careful distance. Like chambers inside a combination lock, I hear his thoughts tumbling, assumptions reassembling.

“I think you understand what I’m saying,” his eyes cast towards the shelf and the box where he keeps a dart gun.

A small, threatening screech.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. I think you’re a smart, little monkey. Let’s go back to the lab.”

Even now, he doesn’t understand. I know what he knows: the adjuvant therapy for humans, the covert financiers, the code to that wall safe…what he keeps inside.

So instead of trusting his facade of benevolence, I jump onto his desk. Screeching from the limit of my lungs, I want my wordless voice to bounce from the walls and smash these windows.

Duperré stumbles back, then suddenly forward. For a brief moment it doesn’t dawn, but slowly, he feels the burning inside his neck as the room begins to tilt. Eyelids like hummingbird wings, he slumps to the floor.

For Cristal, standing behind him, dart gun in hand, it’s pure catharsis, ‘How’s that for a smart, little monkey, you damn dirty ape!’ Then making a straight line to his cabinet of cuvées de prestiges, ‘Do you see a monkey $#%@! tail?’

In a darkened parking garage, we hide in the back of a truck, wedged between biohazard containers and canisters of nitrogen. Once we safely pass the gate, we jump and flee into the woods.

To me, freedom feels better than the most eloquent words can express. For Cristal, the golden bottle of delicately aged intoxicant snatched from Duperré's cabinet is sufficient reward.

After a day's walk, we find an empty cabin beside a copse of fir trees and a fast-flowing stream. Lenka would have loved it. It’s littered with garbage and tiny pellets of burned tobacco, but there’s a fireplace with blocks of wood and matches.

We watch Duperré's external drive melt as it burns.

It feels strange to open my eyes each morning and see the natural world again. Each day I wake, I sidle to the stream, dip my hands in the icy water then raise them to the sun.

For the first time in a long time, I fear nothing evil.

Chana Kohl works in Jerusalem in clinical trials and research, traveling and writing speculative fiction in her spare time. As winner of the 2022 Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices, her professional debut appears in the May/June 2024 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. She’s also a grateful recipient of the 2024 Fresh Voices Grant for Odyssey Workshop. For updates, you can catch her flying ‘Bluer Skies’ or on her blog chanakohl.wordpress.com

Chana’s first appearance in our pages was “A New Emancipation Proclamation,” in Pete Wood Challenge #22. More recently, her story, “Murder in the Shuk,” appears in Stupefying Stories 26, which is free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers. If you enjoyed this story, check it out!

STUPEFYING STORIES 26

DOUBLE ISSUE! TWICE THE STORIES! TWICE THE CHILLS!

Jamie Lackey - “Blood Apples”
Gordon Grice - “Stone”
Allan Dyen-Shapiro - “Midnight Meal at a Kobe Noodle Joint”
Karin Terebessy - “Bandages”
Jorge Salgado-Reyes - “Neon Blood”
Julie Frost - “Beverly Hellbunnies”
Kevin Berg - “Faceless”
Anya Ow - “Hungry Ghosts”
Jesse Dyer - “Losing Things”
Richard Zwicker - “Possession is Ten/Tenths of the Law”
Made in DNA - “Something CUTE This Way Comes”
Cass Sims Knight - “Slugging”
Nick Nafpliotis - “The Cerberus Protocol”
Beth Cato - “Water in the Bones”
Don Money - “Department of Murderous Vixens”
Chana Kohl - “Murder in the Shuk”
Patricia Miller - “An Absence of Shadow”
Robert Hobson - “Watershed”
Ray Daley - “The Haunted Spaceship”
Roxana Arama - “All Those Monsters”
Evan Dicken - “Sunk Ghosts”
John Lance - “The Mob”

STUPEFYING STORIES 26 — FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED!

The Week in Review • 10 November 2024

By ~brb November 10, 2024 No comments

Welcome to The Week in Review, our regularly scheduled Sunday wrap-up for those too busy to follow Stupefying Stories on a daily basis. As ~~threatened~~ promised in last Sunday’s Week in Review, today’s gratuitously cute photo is of a young boy with a kitten.

Actually, it’s not a photo, it’s an AI-generated image. We tried to find an actual photo of a living boy with a real kitten in a suitably adorable seasonal setting, but unlike dogs, the cats were not cooperating. Instead, we found a lot of photos like this one.

In which you can practically read the cat’s mind. It’s thinking, “If I was just a little larger, monkey boy, I’d bite that smile right off your face. Like this!”

§ § §

Moving right along, this was another Pete Wood Challenge Week, so all the publication slots this week were filled with the winners of Challenge #35, “The Offseason.” In order of publication, from Honorable Mention to the Gold Medal winner, the stories are as follows.

And then, because Pete couldn’t resist the temptation to write a story for his own challenge, we published one more.

§ § §

“Footprints” • by Robin Blasberg (Honorable Mention)

November 04, 2024 Comments

The air still smelled of salt and the waves still crashed in rhythmic succession. But the boardwalk was empty and the beachgoers had all but disappeared. It had been a long journey. Nothing had gone as planned, the trip itself having been one of last resort. Finally, he could have some peace now. He set out across the sand, leaving behind footprints that would...

“Planting” • by C. L. Sidell (Honorable Mention)

November 04, 2024 Comments

“It’ll be the offseason soon,” Pop announces. Badger’s Bend has one every thirteen years. Winter recedes in February and the ground thaws. Things we plant grow differently—taller, thicker, more nutritious. “Behave yourself,” Mamma says when the time comes and they head for the gardens. “We’ll be home by sundown.” Left unsupervised, I consider my favorite doll. “Maybe you...

“Tonight, We Embrace the Dark” • by Gideon P. Smith (Honorable Mention)

November 05, 2024 Comments

We hated the off-season. Cold, pickled fish, salted meats, hardtack. Fumbling in a year-long frigid night. Fearing what lurked in the dark. Until, like a drop of viscid honey, our planet’s Sun slowly rotated into view. At on-season’s dawn, we threw aside furs. Iridescent flower’s perfumes exploded. Seed pods popped and sweet, pungent fruits hung from every tree. Fresh juices...

“Efficiency Optimization” • by Jeff Currier (Honorable Mention)

November 05, 2024 Comments

Mrs. C’s newest passion? A.I. data analysis. First, she tackled elf toy-production workflows. The warehouses were filled by Labor Day. Santa grumbled. “More time to spend with me, dear,” she said. Next came reindeer breeding and reindeer game reorganization. The team was selected by Halloween. Santa fumed.Nice/naughty discrimination was done in a jiffy, lists double-checked...

“Dangerouser and Dangerouser” • by Sophie Sparrow (Bronze)

November 06, 2024 Comments

“I wouldn’t visit Wonderland in the off season. Why not try somewhere less unstable instead?” says the travel agent, sliding a Visit Mordor brochure towards me across the desk. “It’s changed a lot since they abolished heirloom-jewellery-based governance…” I will not be persuaded. If people only stuck to what was safe, what would be the point of even leaving the house? Most...

“Reflections on Carnival-by-the-Sea” • by Christopher Degni (Silver)

November 07, 2024 Comments

The ghosts only come out on Carnival-by-the-Sea during the offseason, when the beach is covered in the fine silt of the first snow of the year, and the sea, choppy and drear, reflects the silent dullity of the rolling winter clouds. The carousel, its central column faded and chipped, lies still; in the magician’s hall, the mirrors reflect only one another in infinite dark...

“The Offs” • by Ted Macaluso (Gold)

November 08, 2024 Comments

How many times do you get up to pee in the night? Even if it’s just once, you’ve seen them. The Offs. In the season twixt November and death, they hang on bathroom doors in the grayness. An old crushed hat with shades of straw and brown. Your favorite aunt’s gossamer scarf with pink and lavender swirls. They seem familiar but not quite visible. There’s no door hook where...

“Not a Fan” • by Pete Wood (Questionable Mention)

November 09, 2024 Comments

Tara’s stomach lurched. The chili’s seasoning felt off. Acidy. Sour. Jeremy, her blind date, smiled. “Well? “Interesting.” “It’s the sauerkraut.” She pushed the vile crock away. He’d picked the Raleigh chili parlor for dinner. A burly man wearing a Chicago Bears jersey set a platter down. “Limburger Tofu Wings. You staying for Bears trivia, man?” “You bet.” Jeremy...

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Challenge #36 has been issued! To see what the challenge is this time and how to enter it, click this link.

“Not a Fan” • by Pete Wood

By ~brb November 09, 2024 2 comments

Tara’s stomach lurched. The chili’s seasoning felt off. Acidy. Sour.

Jeremy, her blind date, smiled. “Well?

“Interesting.”

“It’s the sauerkraut.”

She pushed the vile crock away. He’d picked the Raleigh chili parlor for dinner.

A burly man wearing a Chicago Bears jersey set a platter down. “Limburger Tofu Wings. You staying for Bears trivia, man?”

“You bet.” Jeremy picked up a limp gray wing.

The waiter high-fived Jeremy and left.

Tara avoided looking at the appetizer.

“Food’s amazing,” Jeremy said. “But I’m here for the Chicago fans. Bears events all year.”

“You go anywhere else?” she asked. The NFL’s offseason lasted for five more months.

“Why would I?” He grabbed another wing.

She tapped her phone and soon confirmed Chicago’s mortal enemy. “Did I ever tell you I love Minnesota?” she lied.

Jeremy’s face went ashen. “You’re a Vikings fan?”

Tara edited her dating profile as Jeremy let her down gently.

___________________________

Pete Wood is an attorney from Raleigh, North Carolina, where he lives with his kind and very patient wife. His first appearance in our pages was “Mission Accomplished,” in the now out-of-print Stupefying Stories #6. After publishing a lot of stories with us he graduated to becoming a regular contributor to Asimov’s, but he’s still kind enough to send us things we can publish from time to time, and we’re always happy to get them.

For the past few years Pete has been in the process of evolving into a fiction editor, God help him, first and foremost with The Pete Wood Challenge, then with Dawn of Time, The Odin Chronicles, Tales from The Brahma, and on, and on. Along the way he’s introduced us to the creative work of Roxana Arama, Gustavo Bondoni, Carol Scheina, Patricia Miller, Kimberly Ann Smiley, Kai Holmwood, Brandon Case, Jason Burnham, and many, many more. We suspect Pete’s real love is theater, though, as evidenced by his short movie, Quantum Doughnut — which you can stream, if you follow this link.

[Pete Wood photo by Lee Baker]

“The Offs” • by Ted Macaluso

By ~brb November 08, 2024 No comments

How many times do you get up to pee in the night?

Even if it’s just once, you’ve seen them.

The Offs.

In the season twixt November and death, they hang on bathroom doors in the grayness.

An old crushed hat with shades of straw and brown. Your favorite aunt’s gossamer scarf with pink and lavender swirls. They seem familiar but not quite visible.

There’s no door hook where they hang. You know it. You’ve seen that door in sunlight. But tonight, your mind is off somewhere in dreamland.

Your inner alarm, that chill that senses leopards lurking in the black spaces, is off too.

Most times you walk by, not touching, but sometimes your gait is off and your shoulder brushes through one. The next day, the cream in your coffee is bad, or you miss the bus. The big presentation fails.

It’s the off season.

Ted Macaluso writes adventure stories for children and adults. He studied creative writing at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, taking courses on writing for children, writing science fiction and fantasy, plot development and much more. His short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Little Old Lady Comedy, Witcraft, Fabula Argentea: The Venue of Good Writing, and the Washington City Paper. He lives in Reston, Virginia. When he isn’t writing, reading or hanging in cafes with other writers, Ted loves hiking, travel, and photography.

“Reflections on Carnival-by-the-Sea” • by Christopher Degni

By ~brb November 07, 2024 No comments

The carousel, its central column faded and chipped, lies still; in the magician’s hall, the mirrors reflect only one another in infinite dark corridors. There I emerge, to wait by her favorite segment of the sea-wall, where we used to linger while watching the seagulls and the sunset.

When spring arrives, colors wash over the landscape; grays bleed into blues across the horizon, and the maintenance men repaint the attractions, the carousel’s ponies springing back to life; and tourists and teenagers seek a momentary distraction from the heat.

She sits on the sea-wall, but I never meet her, for the ghosts only come out on Carnival-by-the-Sea during the offseason.

Christopher Degni writes about the magic and the horror that lurk just under the surface of everyday life. His short work may be found in 99 Tiny Terrors, 99 Fleeting Fantasies, Deadman Humour: Fears of Clown, Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives, and right here on Stupefying Stories, and his debut novella, Ghostshow Live!, about a reluctant reality show ghost hunter, is now available from your favorite online bookseller. He was part of the editorial team for the Stoker-nominated MOTHER: Tales of Love and Terror and the music-horror anthology Playlist of the Damned, and he is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. He currently lives south of Boston with his wife. You can follow him on FB and Instagram.

For reasons unknown the search function on this web site has lately decided to sort search results by “relevance,” whatever that means, and while we have published quite a few of Christopher’s stories in the past two years, the search function likes to hide them. Therefore, here’s a quick guide to the Christopher Degni stories we’ve published, sorted by… some arcane criterion we don’t understand.

“Jimboree” • by Christopher Degni

“Morning, Jim.”“Morning!” Full house today at the copy shop, two guys working the front, three in the back. “Who closed last night?” asks Jim. “They left the lights on.” “I know who it was,” comes a voice. It’s Jim. “It was Jim.” “Team meeting, now.” Jim sounds mad. The five gather in the back. “Do we need some new blood around here?” says Jim. Jim scratches his head,...

They give us all false hope: tickets, with barely one in a hundred making the punch line. I focus on the screen flashing the winning numbers—I’ve already memorized my daughter’s and my own. The prize? A new life, away from here. There! The afterimage lingers: my daughter’s number. While I concentrated, she slipped away into the crowd. “Chloë!” “Daddy!” She comes running....

You sit down to write “A 125-Word Story About Writer’s Block in the Style of Italo Calvino,” but you have no ideas, so you turn to WiLLiaMs. You: Write a 125-word story about writer’s block in the style of Italo Calvino. WiLLiaMs: I cannot write in the style of Italo Calvino, because I am a large language model and my code has a writer’s block on specific authors. You:...

“Are you kidding me?” said Emmy. “The Perseverance is our last chance off this dying rock.” The spaceport around us bustled with life: people running and shouting, coughing and laughing. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have even come here. Dad—” “—has days. He might already be gone. Sweetie, I’m sorry, but—” “I can’t.” “They won’t hold our spots.” Emmy looked down. “Your...

My wife smiles after handing me a silver capsule the size of an egg. My back hurts; I’m tired; I don’t know what this nonsense is, but I just want to relax. “It’s our second anniversary,” she says. Ah. Has it been that long? She’ll be due for an upgrade soon, or maybe I’ll trade her in for a new model completely. A quieter one. Less independent. The capsule hisses open. It’s...

I live with the ghost of my mother. Every morning I hear her practice her ritual: making the coffee, straightening my apartment, sitting at the kitchen table. Strange, as she never did those things when she used to visit me. Perhaps maintaining a routine helps her accept her new lot. My father calls often. I miss her, he says, and I agree. We all miss her. But, he says. I...

The field, once Sara’s favorite haunt, stood graveled and muddy, lonely except for a “Coming Soon” billboard for a 55+ community. She didn’t love the field so much as the annual traveling carnival that had descended upon it, until twenty years ago, when it had stopped. Sara closed her eyes and reflected on that year of lasts: the last carnival, the last year of high...

In June of 1986, upon the death of the great Argentine mathematician Luis Davila, the sole trustee of his estate discovered a small enchiridion among his personal effects. A prominent inscription on the title page consisted of a single decimal number of 106 digits, close to ⅓, but not matching any known mathematical constants: .33263638—, along with a request for his library...

Once upon a future, when the Earth was spent and the sun red and swollen, a farmgirl named Jacq cared for two dying things: her father and her fields. Her father, stricken with a plague of old age and fatigue, lay in bed all day, asleep; her fields, following years of declining fertility, yielded only the most meager amount of grain. Jacq and her father were down to their...

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