When one has waded through blood to achieve ambition, the best way to keep one’s enemies off-balance is to observe all the exigencies of proper dress. Ieyasu allowed himself a small closed-mouth smile as they dressed him for his first formal appearance.

When they were finished an underling brought a mirror.

“Great lord.”

“Yoi”, Ieyasu inclined his head. “It is well.”

His beautiful consort covered her mouth with one small hand to camouflage unseemly merriment. 

He smiled too, remembering how they had fought back to back and how she had saved his life.

Besides which, he loved her.

©jj 2019

First he made her his secretary, then he made her his plaything, then he sent her to an exclusive clinic in Switzerland where they would make her his fantasy.

Today he was going to see that fantasy for the first time. He brushed past his bodyguards and put his palm to the plate on the playroom door. The door hissed open and he entered alone. At first he could see nobody, just the barren gameplay landscape where he lived out the early twentieth century sci-fi films that fuelled his imagination.

He heard a noise to his left, and turned his head to see her dressed from neck to ankle in skintight black leather and armed to the teeth. He could barely speak for excitement.
“Oh baby, you are even more than I imagined.”
She smiled.
“Now it’s time to make you into my fantasy man.”
He frowned. This wasn’t in the game play he had designed so carefully. But he was sure she had nothing but delight in store for him, so he made his voice excited.
“What’s your fantasy?”
She laughed a short, unamused bark.
“My fantasy? A helpless cripple.”

Then she shot him in the kneecaps.

© jane jago

Shoshanna was known for posters depicting headless male torsos, and ownerless penises. Her work was stark and pointed: in a world where women were objectified she did the same to men.

Her models hated it, but she paid well and there was always food when you were done. 

Being reduced to a set of shapes on a billboard is sobering. The strangest side-effect was the number of feminist beefcake models there came to be.

She asked her favourite ‘body’ why this should be. He shrugged.

“I don’t rightly know, ma’am. All I do know is it makes you aware…”

©jj 2019

An extract from Hunting Darkness by Ian Bristow

Brandon Murphy flagged down a taxi, his movements frantic. Despite the cold that infiltrated the air that November afternoon, he was sweating profusely. Fear like he had never known clutched him, and there was nothing he could do to fix the situation. Why had he involved himself in the first place? If he was honest with himself, it was because he had truly thought he was doing the right thing. But it was clear now that he’d been deceived. None of his original ambitions seemed to be of consequence, and what was worse, none of the promises that had been made to him were being kept.

In fact, it appeared he had become nothing more than a pawn in a much more elaborate game, which was becoming increasingly dark. Breaking and entering was not what he had signed up for, and if it absolutely had to be done, a confrontation definitely wasn’t on his agenda. He’d made that clear and had been assured that no one would be home, so who was that man that showed up? He’d actually fired a shot at the man. What was happening to his life?

His taxi pulled up to the curb. He got in and said, “Brantford Road, N17. I’m in a hurry.”

The cabbie nodded, put the car in gear and stepped on it.

Murphy checked the time on his phone persistently as they made their way across North London. He had been instructed to arrive at their meeting place no later than 4:00 p.m. Apparently, his employer had some important event to attend that evening at the British Academy building, and it was imperative that they left in time to be there for 5:00 p.m.

“Step on it, mate!” Murphy demanded as he watched the time switch over from 3:50 to 3:51. “I would have to get stuck with the slowest bloody cabbie in London!”

“Oi! I’m already over the bleedin’ speed limit. Bloody ‘ell! I reckon yer a bleedin’ fare dodger an’ all!”

“Excuse me?” Murphy snapped. “I always pay me way, mate! Just get us round to Brantford Road as quickly as possible, alright?” He wiped the sweat from his brow and checked the time again.

3:55.

His heart started to pound. He wasn’t going to make it in time. He’d been explicitly warned about being punctual. It wasn’t just his life at stake if he failed to be there, it was his family’s as well.

“Here you are, mate,” said the cabbie as he came to a screeching halt. “Brantford Road, N17. That’ll be thirty-five quid.”

Murphy pulled an uncounted wad of cash out of his pocket and threw it in the cabbie’s lap before jumping out of the car and sprinting toward a warehouse building several yards from the road. He reached the entrance within moments and let himself in. The space inside was nearly pitch-black. He pulled out his phone, lit the screen and began navigating through the maze of pallets that occupied a vast majority of the area.

“Hello?” he called out, making his way toward the opposite side of the warehouse. “Is there anybody here? I made it on time,” he said glancing at his phone to confirm that his statement was accurate. The time read 3:59.

He turned a corner and fear stole over him. Glowing yellow eyes met his own. A beast was upon him before he could react. He felt long claws sliding easily through his stomach. Once. Twice. Three times.

Horrified, he put his hands over as many of the lacerations as he could, but it was a pointless move. His vision started to blur as fatal amounts of blood drained from his body. He fell to the ground, still clutching hopelessly at his wounds. He could almost make out his attacker in the light cast by the phone that had fallen from his hand, but his vision was fading fast.

Vision fading…

Darkness.

Ian Bristow

Miss Mawdsleigh taught art. At an all-girls school. And if that wasn’t soul-destroying enough, she lived at ‘home’ with her overbearingly genteel mother and a white Pekingese dog.

Every Saturday morning she took Pekoe to the dog parlour for his shampoo and grooming. 

If the weather was inclement she waited, otherwise she took a brisk walk in the park.

On this particular Saturday she left Pekoe as usual. But she never came back for him

By the time anybody noticed she was missing it was too late.

It isn’t only teenage boys who run away with the circus…

©jj 2019

Idria, the Dragon Slayer was sitting in a comfortable tavern with her booted feet on the bench opposite, enjoying the most excellent malted ale which the landlord assured her was his own brew.
The sun was shining and through the window, she could see a family of ducks trailing over the millpond.
Life was good and she had not been summoned to slay a dragon for almost a decade now. Which was just as well as she was not sure she could fit in that armour anymore.
It was a hard decision to make. Idria frowned in concentration.
Did she had another ale or maybe ask for another portion of the landlord’s excellent apple pie? The landlord waited, a little impatiently, for her reply. It would be on the house, of course, after all she was The Dragon Slayer.
“Ah tefts! Why not both?”
Decision made Idria relaxed back in her chair and looked out at the peaceful scene beyond the window. Such a perfect day, nothing could spoil it.
Nothing except that small black dot in the sky which she could see getting closer and closer.
Tefts no! Surely not? Not today when she had just ordered –
The magical sound filled her head even before the bird was in clear sight. Around her, the chimes rang out, akin to that of someone dropping a series of metal plates of different sizes onto a bell. A moment later the chiming stopped and Idria was clad in her Dragon Slayer armour.
The good news was that the magic armour fitted. The bad news was – it fitted.
“Tefts! Does my bum look big in this?”
The landlord had just returned with her ale and nearly dropped it in surprise.
“Um – no,” he said colouring. He was not to know the armour gave her the ability to hear his thoughts: No bigger than the rest of you anyway.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The room was full of people, and the noise was such that the woman’s head hurt. She closed her eyes for a second, but that didn’t help so she looked for something to concentrate on. But what. All was noise and chaos.

The bench next to her creaked as a man in saffron robes sat down. She gave him a smile, to which he responded.

Dropping her eyes she was surprised to find comfort in studying the hands that lay quietly on his knees.

He must have seen the direction of her glance, because he smiled.

“Bless you,” he said.

©jj 2019

The Gates to Faerie is a new urban fantasy out now from Dan Melson

Mark Jackson’s problems begin when he wakes up with his ex-wife’s mummified corpse.
Seven years ago, she walked out on him and vanished. Now she’s back desperate for help. She claims a cult cured her cancer. Now they want to kill her.  Sceptical, Mark agrees to help. But when she knocks on his door, she looks like a teenager. They patch things up and one thing leads to another…
In the morning, she’s a mummified corpse and LAPD thinks Mark did it. The solution to his problems can only be found in The Gates to Faerie

I was fourteen the first time I saw someone vanish.
It was a girl, of course.  I remember her as being tall and thin, her skin the rich dark brown of fertile soil, with tightly curled black hair, falling in clumps to her shoulders.  Her bathing suit was lighter brown, and looked as if it were completely dry.  In fact, I don’t remember water dripping off her at all as she exited the lake.
Looking back now, I’d thought I was being cool and low key about scoping her out as she left the lake, which means I was staring and probably drooling.  I knew she was way beyond me, or anyone else in the troop.  We were all watching.
I saw from the way she moved that she wasn’t really a girl at all.  She moved lightly, not disturbing the leaves or dirt under her bare feet.  Young as I was, I knew she had to be older.  Nobody that age masters that kind of grace and effortless self-control.  Not the dancers who practiced in the loft above the gym and took private lessons, not the martial arts devotees who spent every possible moment at the dojo and might already be fourth or fifth dan or the equivalent, and definitely not boy scout nerds like me, no matter how much time we spent outdoors learning how to move quietly and not disturb the animals.  She made the best of us look like clumsy blind bumblers, and she did it effortlessly.  She looked maybe sixteen or eighteen, but she had to be older.
You could tell there was something special about her just looking at the way she moved, like the sunlight that hit her was somehow made special by her presence.  Yet she had an air of complete nonchalance.  She knew she was beautiful and desirable, but to her it was nothing special, it was just the way she was.  She knew we were watching her, enjoying watching her, but it didn’t harm her and so she enjoyed our enjoyment.
As she approached a large stand of manzanita, she turned and I caught a glimpse of her ear as her already dry hair moved, trailing her head through the turn. The ear I saw was small, and pointed, like some of the aliens on Star Trek.  Our collective jaws dropped.  She looked right at me, and laughed.  Canines more pointed than anything I’d seen on a human flashed momentarily.
Then she turned back to the manzanita.  Suddenly, her clothing shifted, no longer a two-piece thong, becoming instead a gown in rich earth colors, somehow all the more alluring.  She turned again, walked under an arch of overhanging red branches, and was gone.
Not “out of sight” gone, “vanished” gone.
Being fourteen and both disturbed and intrigued by what I’d seen, I remember picking myself up off my towel on the lakeshore to check.  Several other members of the troop followed.  We could barely make out that she had left a trail, light footprints with long toes in a couple of places where she had crossed bare dirt.  But it stopped dead under the manzanita arch.  Nor was there a path to continue.  Beyond a small space under the arch, the bushes closed in and became impassable to anything bigger than maybe a cat.  There wasn’t anywhere further to go.
We talked it over for half an hour, and intermittently the rest of the weekend and occasionally after, among those who had been there.  We all agreed that we’d seen a young woman leave the lake.  But beautiful young supermodels do not vanish without further trace in a manzanita thicket.  Eventually, we agreed she’d somehow managed to go around rather than through.  Agreeing that it had to be true didn’t make it so, however, and I remembered what I had seen in the back of my head.  I think we all knew that something unusual had happened, but didn’t want to admit it for fear of appearing naïve.
What a group of children we were.

The Gates to Faerie is out now!

A Bite of... Dan Melson

Q1: Would you rather live in this world or the one you create in your books?

The World of Gates to Faerie (from this book) is our world with an interesting addition.  Since I’d rather have the addition than not, I’d have to choose there.  
The Empire of Humanity from my science fiction side is specifically designed to be a place where the average person can make themselves a pretty good life.  The rulers are constrained by enlightened self-interest.  Unless something goes drastically wrong, action and major risk are things the citizens must specifically seek out if they desire them.  Choosing to live there would entail starting over, but the society is such that the effort will be more than repaid.

Q2: Chocolate cake or coffee cake?

There is no cake but chocolate cake, and I am its prophet.

Q3: Have you ever invented a language?

Not entire languages, like Tolkien, but my Empire of Humanity has four overarching languages which it uses for differing purposes, as well as a large number of local 
Traditional is an agglomerative language much in the mold of English.  It follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over the head, and goes through their pockets for loose vocabulary.  It is a language for everyday conversation, as well as for poets and writers.
Technical is a designed language used to eliminate ambiguity in a take no prisoners manner.  It is the language of legal contracts, of military and government orders, and technical manuals.
Mindlord is another designed language, designed to be information dense and often, to convey multiple meanings with one set of words.  Its drawbacks are that it is context sensitive as well as vulnerable to minor errors in transmission or reception.  It is rarely used by anyone other than operants, and usually only in the form of telepathy.
Concept is perhaps the only truly natural language, a non-verbal language of pure thought.  It can only be used telepathically.

Dan is a real estate agent, loan officer, and eclectic collector of skills and knowledge.  He has written eight science fiction novels, two fantasy, and two consumer guides, and has more story ideas than he will ever have time to finish.  He lives in Southern California with The World’s Only Perfect Woman, two daughters he is preparing for world domination, and a variable number of dachshunds.

You can find him on his blog and Facebook or  follow him on Twitter.

If she closed her eyes she could shut out the noise and argumentation all around her and pretend she was anywhere but in a noisy office among the sort of people she wouldn’t bother to talk to if she had a choice

But there’s a saying about beggars and choosers, so she just closed her eyes and waited.

Eventually, her name was called.

She stood up and walked into her husband’s office. He looked at her with tear tracks on his cheeks.

“Sorry love. But it’s good news. The adoption went through without a hitch.”

“Christopher is our son now.”

©jj 2019

He was the handsomest man of his generation and he had every intention of staying that way. He watched his diet, exercised wisely, and eschewed alcohol and tobacco. It paid off as his face adorned a thousand thousand billboards, and his six pack was familiar to every female everywhere.

Even with fame and fortune, he remained modest and endearingly polite.

Try as they might, the gossip columnists and muckraking bloggers could find nothing to his detriment.

One blogger cornered him.

“Why are you so fucking nice?” she snarled.

He bent to her ear.

“Because I have a very small dick.”

©jj 2019