Hearsay Horizons

Dana glanced at her briefly-illuminated watch: Three, already? Or maybe ‘only.’ Only three. "Are you sure they’re here?" she asked the man sitting beside her. He nodded once in a swift jerk, like a flipped switch. "It's just," Dana continued while they stared at the house with its peeling blue paint, "We've been out here eight hours already, and we haven't seen any movement at all. So Lucifer know we're looking, or this is an abandoned house."                  "You should be used to stakeouts, officer," the man said. He spoke with her partner's voice, Mike's voice, but the movement of the lips she saw out of the corner of her eye didn't match the words. Once again, Dana wondered whether he— it —was speaking English, or whether he was really speaking at all. She scraped her thin brown hair up off of her forehead—damp with sweat, despite the chill that permeated the car.                  "That...

“Whisk three eggs with a quarter cup of milk in a medium bowl. Add a teaspoon of salt, optional. Pour into a pan on medium heat. Stir.” Vivian looked between the recipe on her phone and the carton of eggs. Nope; nothing here about—this. The thing wasn't having any of that. It was there, a little too big for the dimple that held it and its bits of broken shell. "Dragon," Vivian said. It wasn’t scaly, exactly, but she couldn’t tell whether that was because it was so young, or because it was leathery instead. Its wings seemed to be stuck against its yellow hide. The lizard held her gaze with its black eyes, and then it shrieked. Vivian flinched back from the creature's needle teeth, and her phone dropped from her fingers to clatter on the marble floor. The thing's neck pumped as it strained toward her. Vivian covered her ears against the racket of—of a hungry, baby bird, but it wasn’t a bird. It was —            “A dragon.” Its cries drowned out her voice. ...

silence                              peace                         darkness                      rest                              food                  darkness                       hunger                             play                        silence                                    hunger                             rest    ...

Five-thirty on a weekday made the grocery store a particular vortex of crazy. Dawn's fellow office drones wore their ties loosened, or walked with wincing footsteps; she navigated around stay-at-home parents shepherding their chattering flocks through the aisle. Canned music crackled from overhead; unintelligible announcements interrupted it at irregular intervals, but she couldn't tell what any given song was supposed to be, anyway. Neighbors who seemed to see each other every day stopped to chat just in front of endcaps loaded with sale items Dawn needed. Piercing beeps from the checkout lanes carried almost as far as the peculiar scent of fish from the meat section.               Dawn maneuvered her cart through the store like a cantankerous bull. She traded smiles, quick as minnows, with each harried housewife or burned-out shift worker that met her eyes. Most of them did a double-take at her heterochromia, she knew, but Dawn was already past th...

The rest of the Madcaps had no idea where Cabyn Sorice spent her downtime; it was better that way. Bravos in a soup kitchen would only end in pain. Sorice doled out rat stew to the homeless and luckless in line. Her smile reached her eyes, but it did nothing to brighten them. Her spirit mask sat around her left eye like a yellowed ivory birthmark. None of the diners commented; most of them knew her as the whisper she was, and others were too out of their heads on drugs or misery to notice anything at all.              “Be careful, dear,” said the next woman in line. “A lot of strange folk about—mean a body harm.”              “I’ll keep a watch out, Mrs. Branburn,” Sorice said. The woman flickered in her vision; Sorice squinted her right eye to sharpen the vision through her spirit mask. The ghost stabilized. Sorice met her smile with one of her own, until a spot of blue across the dining hall caught her attention...

This pub is a haven amid the dark and stormy dangers of Barovia, and those inside sing and drink to inure themselves against the horrors of their world. The ringleader of the current song lifts her mug to a bar patron who has caught her eye. The singer is too plump for her average height, a dusting of acne scars making her cheeks craterous in the firelight, but her chestnut curls gleam like treasure. Her grey eyes brim with glee as she leads diners and drunkards through the bawdy tale.  The singer’s patched finery and her Paridon accent speak of nobility down on its luck; the woman’s new friend finds his eyes fixed on the large glass pendant hanging against her chest.                He slips an arm around her shoulder, presses a coin into her hand, and whispers a few words into her ear. Like Victor Mordenheim throwing a switch, there is an electric change: her shoulders under his arm stiffen like stone, her grin falls from her face, and the...

It'd taken two hours for three of the four runners to make it, legit, through the line to the club door. The bland elf in a well-cut suit leaned casually against the wall through which they all felt the pounding dance beats. To his side, the sniper in her daring gown--Hyp wasn't about to ask where she was keeping her gun--paced in place.           What's the holdup? their decker shot at them from her van a couple blocks down. The sniper shook her head.           This cesso at the door, she said back. This place is not worth this; the job better be. Can you hack his brainpan? A pause was the decker either laughing or checking.             La negativa.            Hyp stood nose-to-chin with the bouncer. She was taller, but he was just a bit broader. She bristled with piercings, even in her tusks, and she wore a ratty leather jacket; the bouncer had stopped his own thugg...

" MUCH ABREW INDEED! Local entrepreneur Rosemary Currie's café has quickly brought a little life into a neglected part of Acadia. Frequented by office workers, stay-at-home mothers, and amateur writers alike, Much Abrew features a warm atmosphere, welcoming staff, and delicious homemade food. A great place for a snack, a coffee, or a 'damned spot' of tea!!!"            Rosemary lowers her eyes from the newspaper clipping hanging near the service counter. Her eyes skim over the elderly woman staring at her from a table across the room; they settle on the mural on the far wall. Rosemary fixates on Miranda's ecstasy at the sight of new human beings, depicted in shades of sunset. She tries to find that joy in people in herself.           Despite herself, Rosemary notices the woman turning back to speak to her companions. Not even the eye-roll from one of them can assuage Rosemary's tension when the old woman gets to her feet. ...

In the superhero justice system, collateral damage to civilians is considered especially heinous. In Acadia, Washington, the dedicated detectives that find innocents and investigate these vicious crimes are members of an elite squad known as insurance investigators. This is my story.          Dun. Dun. So much for these fancy electronic locks Ben had installed; just scattered errors I couldn’t parse. I let my ID hang on my lanyard to fumble for my keys. I made a drunken thrust at the lock once I found them. The door clicked open, and Buster followed me inside. I steadied myself against the door as I bent to snap off his vest; his body relaxed, his tail wagged, and Buster made to trot into the house.        “No, Buster. Stay tidy.” I reinforced the command with a quiet touch of my mind. He whined, but he remained within the mudroom—where piles of dust and streaks of dirt were the law of the land. Grit and splinters dulled my hi-viz vest ...

Snowfall overnight was common here on the island of Ivethay. It was the afternoon sun that surprised Svanhild. It gleamed on the white evergreens, bent and twisted by their burden, and made diamonds of the frozen droplets studding the elms. The temperature froze the snow; each step echoed its crunch throughout the forest. Svanhild stopped fifty feet from her tree of choice; she drew a breath and turned around with another short set of crunches. The girl drew back her axe, steadied her aim, and released. It bit into the elm just a few inches above the browned handprint that had been her target.                "Skreyja, skreyja," she grunted to herself. The child pricked her thumb on the knife at her belt. She extended her hand down and out backward; her thumb left an arc of red in its wake. Svanhild took another breath. As she began moving her hand upward, the axe disappeared from the tree. It grew from the red arc, blade-first, until Svanhild's...

Nobody was allowed on the mountain, especially not children. Nobody wanted to climb the mountain--except for children. What was the point of making it up here where Acadia was just a smudge in the valley below, except to do what they weren't allowed? It was boring. Every peak, everywhere, had become... pointless. All of the gods had come down into the world, and all of the sleeping kings and their knights had long since wakened. The rise of the empowered made the mundane irrelevant.          But here they were, even so, on this barren cliff. No vegetation would ever grow on this mix of sand and stone; the kids had nothing to shield them from the wind, or the sight of any eyes in the sky. But none of the fliers small as dots overhead shouted, and nobody darted down to meet them. Maybe they didn't want to brave the bluster. It was bad enough that Anise was forced to climb upward alongside the rest of them. Jackson could have sped onward; in fact, he was probably...