My story, “The Light Between” is up today on 365tomorrows. It’s about a Frankenstein Monster who builds a piece of art for an office park. Her name is Rae and she can’t control her tongue. Her "Doctor Frankenstein" is named Winston, who I named after a cat I saw on the internet. You may have seen videos of this cat. It's pretty cute.

The story itself is about being alive. Frankenstein is a monster who lives between life and death - but in many ways, this describes all of us - alive, but on a journey towards death. We are all in a transient state, it's just that the transient state of the Frankenstein monster is highlighted, just as any person who has a terminal illness has their own mortality highlighted by their situation.

Yet Rae does live, creates, and feels. She lives a life between being shocked by electricity and slipping into death, but when she's awake, she lives. The "light between" is that light between our own births and deaths.

Jared thinks I should expand this concept into a longer story - and maybe I will. The nice thing about writing flash is that it preserves the idea, the concept, in 600 words. For someone who gets a lot of ideas, it's nice to have a good way to bottle them.




Rae woke up strapped to a table, which was hardly out of the ordinary, but always came as a surprise. She had a headache, but that was to be expected, since she had a metal bar through her forehead. Her fingers were smoking.

“Bergh.” she said, although what she intended to say was “I could really go for a coffee.”

Winston leaned over her, jubilant. He was always jubilant, no matter how much she was smoking when her eyes opened.

“It worked!” he said, repeating his usual script. He was so pleased with himself.

“Graah.” Rae said, when what she wanted to say was “Get out of my face.” He was always pawing at her when she was strapped down.

Winston whirled away, laughing maniacally. “Brilliant!” he shouted. “I’m brilliant!”


You can read the full story here: http://www.365tomorrows.com/05/04/the-light-between/

Read it here, for playing on the front page as a LIMITED ENGAGEMENT ONLY: The Birth Mother and the Whole Living Child

I was wondering what it would be like to introduce my story as if it was a movie trailer and now I know how silly it looks. It's important to learn these things.

This story is different from a lot of the science fiction I usually write in that there are no humans in it. None. No twist ending where the main character turns out to be human, or the invaders turn out to be human, or humans are watching as an experiment. No humans.

This story is about mothers and children and the nature of freedom. In that, it shares quite a bit with my last two stories which one of which was about assimilation and another which dealt with a mother and her children.

It also has a fight scene and rebels and poison and an alien invasion. Also, did I mention that there are no humans?

My story, "Body-Death" is live today on 365 Tomorrows. Here is a excerpt:


Was it the crisp hard skin of an apple that hurt her teeth? The texture of sand beneath her feet, soft in summer and rough when bound with winter ice? Or was it the smell of autumn, all bones and fire? I lost my mother to these things; the texture of a quilt, the size of the moon, the dust in a sunbeam.

Read the rest here: http://www.365tomorrows.com/04/01/body-death/

Photo: Available

Fallout

She fought me again yesterday. It made me feel like a monster. I tried the gentle approach but she refused, so I had to take her by force. It was, as usual, satisfying and depressing.

Afterwards, I hid in the forest and slept. I’m afraid she’ll try to kill me if I sleep out in the open. I tracked her and caught up quickly. If we don’t get back to the compound soon, the others, my people and hers, will assume we are dead. I imagine them dividing our meager possessions.

Today I brought her roast rabbit. Rabbits were rare for the first year after The Fallout, but now I’m finding more of them. Some of them are oddly mutated; missing a leg, or an extra ear, but they are still good for roasting. I left it next to her while she slept. Maybe it will help to mend things a little.

Later, I found her sitting cross-legged on a large rock. She was holding a stick she had chiseled to a point.

( “Are you going to try to kill me again?” I asked her. )