The sun rose over the meadow, painting the horizon in crimson and gold.

Leaning on the fence, Reuben watched, as he had every day for fifty years. He should have been overseeing his small flock, sold last year when there was no money left to keep them. He’d had to sell his handful of acres too.

With a roar heavy plant began tearing up his old meadow. A luxury development the sign said.

Sighing, Reuben headed home.

Thank goodness he’d sold with planning permission. Maybe, after he got back from the cruise, he’d put a jacuzzi in his refurbished cottage…

E.M. Swift-Hook

The Story Eaters

It was midnight in the stacks, and the air was filled with tiny rhythmic noises of a sort that the fanciful might have thought of as books snoring. The young woman busily shelving books was obviously not fanciful though, as she worked efficiently, serene and undisturbed by the night and its secrets.
She positioned each volume carefully – tutting occasionally as she unbent dogeared corners and removed unsuitable objects being used as ‘bookmarks’.
It was right at the end of her task when she was briskly dealing with the ugly temperament of a couple of grimoires that something outside the usual caught her attention. Being of a methodical turn of mind she completed her task before investigating the source of an undefinable disquiet.
It felt as if the source of the problem, whatever it might be, was the children’s literature section, so once she had replaced her trolley in the storeroom she walked that way on quiet feet. The closer she came to the area dedicated to myth and legend for young readers the more she understood there was definitely something needing her attention.
As yet she had no notion what was afoot, but whatever it was, it was sufficient to disturb the serenity of the sleeping books, to the extent that they were huddling together in clumps. Once she set foot in the aisle between the worst affected volumes, she could hear a susurrating sound as if a breeze moved through the pages. The books were actually shivering with fear.
“Calmly now,” she said infusing her voice with both confidence and command. “Calm yourselves. I am here.”
It was as if a sigh of relief ran through the shelved books.
A small black bird flew from the pages of a venerable volume on the topmost shelf. It was pursued by a set of snapping teeth which were rapidly gaining as it flapped its tiny wings in near desperation. The Night Librarian held out a small freckled hand and the bird clung to her. The snapping teeth stopped in their tracks before a voice laced with menace spoke.
“I am hunger.”
It was joined by another voice, and another and another…
“I am cold.”
“I am fear.”
“I am pain.”
More and more voices joined in until a cacophonous litany of pain and anger filled the night air.
The night librarian waited a beat then spoke a single word of power.
There was silence.
“Better. Now who speaks for the displaced ones?”
The voice that answered her was colder than a north wind and angrier than a volcano.
“I speak for all. And if you let us drink your blood and eat your story we will leave the dry books to their desiccated little lives.”
The librarian put her free hand in the sagging pocket of her cardigan.
“Show yourselves then.” She spoke with quiet dignity.
The angry one laughed. “I do enjoy a courageous meal.” Then it began to laugh. An insane, humourless sound that beat against the venerable timbers of the library. When it regained its breath it spoke sneeringly. 
“Do you have any idea what you are asking.”
“Several. Now show yourself if you don’t fear me.”
The very air seemed to hold its breath.
“Me. Fear you?”
Came a bang and a flash and a dark figure stood in the aisle facing the librarian and the terrified bird. It made to snatch the feathered one, but failed as the young woman simply twitched her hand out of reach.
“There is nothing for you here. Go home.” She spoke without inflection, but even so the darkling shuddered right down to its misshapen shoes.
When it answered her it sounded fretful.
“I shall go nowhere. You cannot banish me.”
“Can I not?”
All around there was a sound as of rushing wind, or rustling leaves and the whispers started up again.
“You can not banish us…”
The librarian took a knobbly stick from her pocket.
“Can I not?” she repeated softly.
The winds about her grew fiercer and whipped her skirts and sandy hair into disarray.
“Not even with your little wand.”
“Shall I banish you by name?”
It was as if a hurricane blew the pages of the shrinking books and tried to snatch the knobbly little stick from its owner’s grasp.
“Nooooooo…..”
The librarian sighed and concentrated.
“Rumplestiltskin. Begone.”
The darkling went leaving behind only a sour smell and the memory of fear. The librarian soothed the books before going back to her unending round of the tasks the day librarians thought themselves too beautiful to be worried by.

© Jane Jago 2019

With a belly full of turkey
And a slightly tarnished hat
She laid down in the sitting room
Feeling somewhat fat
I shall eat no more this day
And neither shall I booze
I’ll pull my hat over my eyes
And have a gentle snooze
But somebody made cocktails 
And they broke out the mince pies
And then they opened chocolates 
Before her very eyes
By the time the carol singers
Stood outside the door
She was almost certain 
She could eat and drink no more
But then they played some party games 
While granny snored and farted
Charades were loud and noisy
Just to get the party started
Then mum made turkey sandwiches
And rather lethal punch
She thought they may be hungry 
As it was three hours since lunch
With a belly full of turkey
And some tinsel round her head
She mused, bemused, that Christmas 
Made her wish that she was dead

©️jj 2019

Christmas Dinner

Menu:

Prawn cocktail

Roast turkey, sausagemeat and apricot stuffing, chestnut stuffing, sage and onion stuffing balls, pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, roast parsnips, mashed swede, Vichy carrots, braised red cabbage, ratatouille, leeks au gratin, cauliflower cheese, Brussels sprouts with bacon and walnuts, peas, gravy, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, apple and orange sauce.

Christmas pudding with brandy butter, custard and clotted cream

I would be willing to wager a good portion of my pension that this approximates what at least some of you young things think you need to provide.

Well I’m here to tell you it’s unnecessary.

Simplify.

One: You. Do. Not. Need. A. Starter. Half of your guests will be too pissed to handle anything delicate, and none of them need their appetites blunting. We don’t want to be eating turkey until Valentine’s Day.

Two: Only serve what people will eat. Thus. Small helpings of turkey (breast meat only), a good handful of roast potatoes, twelve peas, as many pigs in blankets as will fit on the rest of the plate. Some gravy. The only exception to this being if you have guests from the colonies who will eat mashed potatoes.

Three: Nobody. Eats. Christmas. Pudding. Give them vanilla ice cream with a generous dollop of dried fruit you have soaked overnight in rum.
This will push even those who are not quite pissed yet over the edge and with only average luck they will fall asleep at the table, leaving the prosecco and mint chocs for you.

Result!

Happy Christmas!

The Little Engine

It was just past midnight, though the sky seemed extra dark
And all the little steam engines were gathered in the park
Then something broke the silence with a rattle and a creak
The oldest engine cleared his tubes, and he began to speak

“There are not many nights”, he said, “when we are gathered near
So I would tell a tale if you might have the will to hear”
The wheezing and the whistling was no louder than a breeze
And yet a tiny engine whispered, “Will you tell us please?”

“It happened very long ago, my father’s father’s story
When Owen Owen rode the rails to fame and shining glory
He was just an engine, and his livery quite worn
He pulled the ore from down the mine and worked from night to morn

But then one day in winter, he was give a big surprise
His driver and an engineer they fitted him with eyes
Clear and shining brass they were and bright to light the way
And driver said they made the mine as bright as any day

What Owen engine thought of them was never very clear
But those bright eyes they lit the miners way throughout the year
For two days every winter the pit was put to bed
And Owen Owen engine was left peaceful in his shed

He quite enjoyed the rest he felt his heavy toil had bought
And closing down his brassy eyes he sat in happy thought
Until one night when all around the fog was thick and yellow
His rest was interrupted by a fat and jolly fellow

‘Owen Owen’, said the man, ‘I’ve come to ask your aid
I’ve toys to take to children but the reindeer are afraid
They cannot see through this thick murk and fear to break their legs
Will you help us out dear chap? Or do I have to beg?’

And Owen Owen smiled a smile as wide as wide could be
‘Open up the shed’ he said, ‘that’s just the job for me’
And so it came about upon that darkling winter’s night
That Owen Owen guided Santa with his eyes so bright.”

And every engine in the park gave a quiet beep
Before they closed their iron minds and tumbled back to sleep.

©️jane jago

The Christmas Cake

Conventional wisdom will tell you that you should have baked a fruit cake of the size and consistency of a breeze block sometime last January and that you should have been feeding it brandy weekly ever since. That you should have handcrafted marzipan from ground almonds and other ingredients too numerous to mention. That you should have spent many hours making Holly Leaves and Christmas Roses from sugar paste. And that your icing should be as smooth and hard as a frozen pond.

Pfft, I say. And again pfft.

Number one. Nobody eats Christmas Cake.

Number two. If they did it’s fattening.

Number three. Whatever…

But:

If you must make a cake, just chuck together whatever is your usual fruit cake recipe and shove a quarter bottle of rum in the mix. Buy a slab of ready rolled marzipan, ditto icing. Shove on cake. Sprinkle Maltesers, chocolate raisins, and dark chocolate buttons. Job done. If you can be arsed.

More sensibly, pop along to Waitrose and buy a (insert name of famous chef here)  thing. It will taste like shite but the neighbours will be impressed….

Presents bought, food sorted, lights put up and the tree decorated. Time to chill out and how better than with some sci-fi fun reading. Sci-Fi Lampoon Magazine is full of speculative humorous stories. 

An excerpt from “Stop Continental Drift!” by GD Deckard, who this issue’s Featured Author.

Piper’s insistent grip was pulling him towards the Alien. Decision time. Go with her or fall on his face. “OKAY.” He stumbled to her, muttering. “But I ain’t walking. We hitchhike.”
“What’s hitch hiking?” Spice asked.
“You stand by the road and hook your thumb out like this,” Bob showed Spice, who stepped into the intersection holding up his thumb just as a blue bus covered in colorful lettering careened from around the corner into him. The spherical Alien concaved like a collapsing basketball then rebounded ahead of the bus now screeching to a halt. The bus and alien rolled to a stop in front of Bob and Piper. She rushed to him. “Spice! Are you alright?” People piled out of the bus. “OMG!” and “It’s an alien,” some said while others checked the front of the bus. Bob helped Spice to his feet.
“My suit saved me.” The Alien brushed himself off.
Piper fingered his suit. “It looks like regular spandex.”
“I backed it with duct tape,” Spice explained, turning thoughtful. “Say, if you people are
ever allowed to export, I’d start with duct tape. It would sell just about anywhere in the galaxy.” “Are you injured?” A bearded young white man broke from the group of diverse young
people around the bus. He stopped to look twice at Old Spice. “You’re an alien! Not that that’s bad.” He added hastily. “Aliens are welcome.”
“You’ll take us to Denver? I need to get there to catch the next ship home.”
“Uh. Well, we are headed west.” He extended his hand. “My name is Jackson, Jackson Pfizer.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jackson Jackson. May I call you Jackson?”
“Please do.” Jackson’s smile broke through the confused look on his face. “I just received my Doctorate in Social Media.” The confused look returned. “Well,” he backed away. “If you are OKAY….”
“I am, Doctor Jackson. Let’s go.” Spice boarded the bus.
Bob studied the bus. It was hand painted in the style of wall graffiti, a blue base covered with orange volcanoes erupting over yellow buildings toppling in earthquakes. Scrawled below the windows in big fluorescent lime green letters was, “Stop Continental Drift!” and “Pin The Plates!!” He grinned and followed Piper aboard. They headed west.
It didn’t take long to meet the other Doctorates on the bus, it being a short bus. Each had recently completed their PhD in a socially acceptable field and were doing their Residency on a government funded tour. Sitting with the group gathered around Spice, Bob studied their eager faces while Piper told him what he was seeing, one of her professional talents as a journalist. “Each represents a different culture.”

A bite of… The Lampooning Team 

The following answers were provided by Executive Editor Margret Treiber. The rest of the team claim to be as innocent as Pontius Pilate.

Question 1: Is it important to include all shades of belief and sexual orientation in a book?

I think we all strive to be as inclusive as possible, and we love to her all manner of voices. While we don’t necessarily control the stories, we do enjoy submissions from people of diverse backgrounds. So yes, it’s important. Now, do we expect every single combination of human being to be represented? I’m not sure that’s possible. But we’re game. We could use a few more submissions from purple and green people.

Question 2: Why do you write? Money is an acceptable answer.

Because we are all geeks with no life outside of our imaginary universes. We find solace in each other’s geekiness and try to connect with just one person, once a day so the loneliness and emptiness abates. Nah, we just dig being funny. So we all decided to make funny together.

Question 3: What is worse, ignorance or stupidity?

Ignorance. Stupidity isn’t necessarily the stupid person’s fault. Ignorance is laziness. I mean read or something for crap’s sake. Come on. Of course even in this band of super geeks nobody knows how to travel faster than light. Is that ignorance? Are we being lazy? Hmm, maybe we should be hating on ourselves.

Question 4: Facing your demons? How much of what you write could be classed as therapy?

I imagine a lot of us start out as therapy writers until writing becomes a living,  and then the scales tilt toward the money-making side. But let’s face it, the lot of us need a ton of therapy.

Question 5: Have you ever written somebody you dislike into a book, just so you could make them suffer?

We’ve written bad jokes to make our readers suffer. If that counts

Question 6: You are at a dinner party. Name the four people living, dead or fictional you would most like to be sitting with.

Muses, four muses that whisper ideas in our ears so our little keyboards go clickity-clack and we write a ton of funny stuff. They gotta be funny muses, though, like the kind that do slapstick and pratfalls when they walk into the room. Maybe the muses of sarcasm, and comedic timing would be great.

The Lampoon staff team are:

Ian K., Publisher, (actually) wears a clown’s red bulb on his nose. Ian’s New York City born and bred, so this attracts no attention.

Adam Stump, Editor-in-Chief, talks to God daily. Also a United Methodist Church Pastor.

Margret Treiber, Executive Editor, motorcyclist. She & her partner regularly terrorise Senior Citizen drivers in South Florida.

GD Deckard, Instigator of the magazine. Regarded by the working Staff as a mascot.

Our first issue is available now in paperback and eFormats from online book retailers Galaxy wide at Amazon, Books-A-Million, Google Books or Lulu.

The next issue is planned for first quarter 2020 and if you are a writer of humorous speculative fiction our Submission Guidelines are here.

Ah. Christmas the time of cheery carollers, sleigh bells, and happy families. Or, looking at it less romantically, the time of burnt dinners, family fights, and divorce.

That first Christmas together. That’s the one that sets the pattern for all the others. Do not go to his mother’s. Or yours. Ideally, see no one and do a lot of sex.

Given that that isn’t happening, here are a few ground rules.

1. Do not be cozened into buying them tins of mixed sweeties. There will be at least two thirds that nobody likes. You will be reduced to feeding them to the dog in August.

2. Booze. Do not buy eggy stuff. It looks like snot and it tastes like snot, and nobody will drink it. If granny likes a Snowball. Buy a couple of ready made ones in pouches. She will only go to sleep with her face in the sprouts if you give her proper booze.

3. The Turkey. You do not need something the size of a Shetland Pony to feed you, your husband, and granny. Small is beautiful. After all nobody really likes turkey anyway.

4. Cooking. There’s a lot of rot talked about Christmas dinner. Do plenty of roast potatoes and a ton of them little sausages wrapped in bacon, because that’s all anybody eats.

5 Most importantly. The Punch. It should be very strong. And to begin with it should taste nice. After The Queen’s Speech it pretty much stops mattering. By that time people will drink meths.

And that is the secret of Christmas in a nutshell (NB do not buy nuts. Somebody – usually your new husband’s cousin from Reading – will inevitably display the symptoms of anaphylactic shock if you do).

Granny’s Punch

1 litre brandy
1 litre vodka
1 bottle ginger wine
1 litre pineapple juice
1 litre ginger ale
1 net of baby oranges
1 large tin pineapple chunks
Loads of glacé cherries
Punch bowl/clean plastic bucket/WHY
Ice

Cut the oranges in halves, then throw everything in the punch bowl. Drink much of it yourself.

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. If you missed previous episodes you can start reading from the beginning.

Julia awoke to the vicious burn of smelling salts and found herself in a windowless room, lit only by a dim ceiling light and a squat brazier full of red-hot coals. She was strapped to some sort of a wooden contrivance with her legs apart and all her weight hanging from her wrists, that which were bound to the crossbar with tight leather thongs. To say she was uncomfortable was to understate the case, and she had the feeling things weren’t going to get any better.
“Is she awake?” it was an educated female voice, rendered thick by excitement and bloodlust.”
A big hand lifted Julia’s head and a dark face stared down at her.
“Oh yes, she’s awake.”
Julia heard the whiplash before she felt its bite. Part of her felt as if she had fallen through time and was back in the hands of the Mongol slavers. It was as if her life was repeating the horror like a sick rerun. She set her teeth and concentrated on not making a sound. It was difficult, as the cut of the whip was exacerbated by the drag of her own weight on her wrists. It would have been only too easy to pander to the desires of whoever was wielding the whip, but she wouldn’t give in. The beating went on for some time and Julia could feel the blood running down her back. Suddenly it stopped, and she heard the sound of harsh breathing instead.
A man spoke, in the thick accent that took Julia back to her youth.
“Enough. Let her hang for now.”

The ‘Pit’ had its uses and in the past Dai had found the fact that Bryn knew and was on good terms with a fair few of those condemned to work there, meant that he could get hold of information that others might be left waiting for – or might never get at all. Those who monitored and reviewed the surveillance data were not inclined to be so helpful when asked to provide evidence of some minor misdemeanour by a fellow Briton. They were also notorious at spending hours trawling through surveillance that they knew would be of no value, if they felt so inclined. The abduction of a Roman was not likely to be something they would be pulling any stops out for and Dai was not surprised to find the Tribune had been given the standard response that they were working on all possible sources and had instigated overtime to ensure sufficient eyes were available. Which was at least half true.
Bryn had looked sick when Dai told him what had happened to Julia.
“You know she could already be d-”
“Yes. And I also know the longer we have the Pit playing the anti-Roman card, the higher the chance of that will be.”
Bryn chewed his lower lip for a moment.
“Can you stake me a couple of tickets to the Game?”
Dai stared at his decanus.
“Can I -?”
“Not for me. Just it never hurts to have something to offer people as an incentive – and a bit of a competition with a nice prize is incentive.”
It would cost him over a month’s salary and be completely beyond the pocket of Bryn who had a family to support on half as much and probably in dream territory for those paid little more than a minimum-wage pittance to work in the Pit. He didn’t hesitate longer than that thought before nodding.
Less than an hour later Bryn and Dai were in the dark recesses of the Pit looking at the rear view of two men running. One with something slung over his shoulder.
“So why do we think that’s her?” Dai was puzzled.
“If we run it back to where the bloke carrying her changes shoulders, there’s just a glimpse of two bare feet,” the operator explained patiently.
The man brought up a still on another screen, and Dai felt anger burning his throat at the sight of what had to be Julia’s feet poking out of some sort of heavy duty binbag. He turned his attention back to the moving picture.
“That’s Via Flumen,” Bryn said pointing to a low arch where the two men vanished from view. “And if they’ve gone into that estate of boxed up insulae and allies, the Caligula’s a gods-forsaken maze.”
“No surveillance?”
“You don’t waste money watching rats shitting, fornicating and fighting each other, do you?”
Dai stared at the image and tried to catch the thought that was playing at the edge of his mind. He was suddenly sure there was something he was missing. He signalled, and the operator ran the piece again. A small dog pelted out of the alley just as the two men reached it and went in. Then his heart rate shot up.
“Filius canis, how could I be so stupid, Bryn get us transport to that place and I want all our people there when we get there.” He jabbed his finger at the arch on the screen marking the entrance to the estate. Then as Bryn obeyed, Dai used his wristphone. “Edbert? I need you to go to Via Flumen entrance of the Caligula Insulae Estate – and bring Canis and Lupo, they have work to do.”

Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook