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    Fiction River: No Humans Allowed: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #22
    Fiction River: No Humans Allowed: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #22
    Fiction River: No Humans Allowed: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #22
    Ebook338 pages4 hours

    Fiction River: No Humans Allowed: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #22

    By Annie Reed, Lee Allred, Robert T. Jeschonek and

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    About this ebook

    Humans prove great fodder for fiction. But what about the universe of possibilities offered by the nonhuman protagonist? The eighteen daring humans of Fiction River’s latest volume explore just that. From a goblin who must choose whether to risk everything for love to a heroic rat adventuring at sea to sentient underpants (yes, underpants), these nonhuman tales demonstrate why Adventures Fantastic says: “If you haven’t checked out Fiction River yet, you should. There’s something for everyone.”

    “…a great set of unique and fast-paced tales of the imagination!”

    —Astro Guyz on Fiction River: Recycled Pulp

    Table of Contents

    “In the Beginnings” by Annie Reed

    “At His Heels a Stone” by Lee Allred

    “In the Empire of Underpants” by Robert T. Jeschonek

    “The Sound of Salvation” by Leslie Claire Walker

    “Goblin in Love” by Anthea Sharp

    “Slime and Crime” by Michèle Laframboise

    “Always Listening” by Louisa Swann

    “Here I Will Dance” by Stefon Mears

    “Rats at Sea” by Brenda Carre

    “Sense and Sentientability” by Lisa Silverthorne

    “When a Good Fox Goes to War” by Kim May

    “The Game of Time” by Felicia Fredlund

    “The Scent of Murder” by Angela Penrose

    “Still-Waking Sleep” by Dayle A. Dermatis

    “Inhabiting Sweetie” by Dale Hartley Emery

    “The Legend of Anlahn” by Eric Kent Edstrom

    “Sheath Hopes” by Thea Hutcheson

    “We, The Ocean” by Alexandra Brandt

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWMG Publishing
    Release dateApr 28, 2017
    ISBN9781386561620
    Fiction River: No Humans Allowed: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #22
    Author

    Annie Reed

    Award-winning author and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch calls Annie Reed “one of the best writers I’ve come across in years.”Annie’s won recognition for her stellar writing across multiple genres. Her story “The Color of Guilt” originally published in Fiction River: Hidden in Crime, was selected as one of The Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016. Her story “One Sun, No Waiting” was one of the first science fiction stories honored with a literary fellowship award by the Nevada Arts Foundation, and her novel PRETTY LITTLE HORSES was among the finalists in the Best First Private Eye Novel sponsored by St. Martin’s Press and the Private Eye Writers of America.A frequent contributor to the Fiction River anthologies and Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, Annie’s recent work includes the superhero origin novel FASTER, the near-future science fiction short novel IN DREAMS, and UNBROKEN FAMILIAR, a gritty urban fantasy mystery short novel. Annie’s also one of the founding members of the innovative Uncollected Anthology, a quarterly series of themed urban fantasy stories written by some of the best writers working today.Annie’s mystery novels include the Abby Maxon private investigator novels PRETTY LITTLE HORSES and PAPER BULLETS, the Jill Jordan mystery A DEATH IN CUMBERLAND, and the suspense novel SHADOW LIFE, written under the name Kris Sparks, as well as numerous other projects she can’t wait to get to. For more information about Annie, including news about upcoming bundles and publications, go to www.annie-reed.com.

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      Book preview

      Fiction River - Annie Reed

      Contents

      Foreword: Classics, Rats, and Underpants

      Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Introduction: The Nonhuman Equation

      John Helfers

      In the Beginnings

      Annie Reed

      At His Heels a Stone

      Lee Allred

      In the Empire of Underpants

      Robert T. Jeschonek

      The Sound of Salvation

      Leslie Claire Walker

      Goblin in Love

      Anthea Sharp

      Slime and Crime

      Michèle Laframboise

      Always Listening

      Louisa Swann

      Here I Will Dance

      Stefon Mears

      Rats at Sea

      Brenda Carre

      Sense and Sentientability

      Lisa Silverthorne

      When a Good Fox Goes to War

      Kim May

      The Game of Time

      Felicia Fredlund

      The Scent of Murder

      Angela Penrose

      Still-Waking Sleep

      Dayle A. Dermatis

      Inhabiting Sweetie

      Dale Hartley Emery

      The Legend of Anlahn

      Eric Kent Edstrom

      Sheath Hopes

      Thea Hutcheson

      We, The Ocean

      Alexandra Brandt

      About the Editor

      Acknowledgements

      Subscribe to Fiction River

      Copyright Information

      Foreword

      Classics, Rats, and Underpants

      Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      One of my favorite volumes of Fiction River is Recycled Pulp, edited by the redoubtable John Helfers. In that volume, John took a group of stellar unrelated stories and somehow managed to create a single whole. I cannot tell you what a feat of editing that was.

      I didn’t think John could do such a thing again. And I certainly didn’t think an anthology titled No Humans Allowed would come close to comparing with the amazing Recycled Pulp.

      I should have trusted not only John, but the cadre of writers who form the core of Fiction River’s family. Given an assignment to write stories from a nonhuman point of view, these writers stepped up and created some of the best stories I’ve read in years.

      While I love all of the stories in No Humans Allowed (and that’s saying something in and of itself), I do have my favorites. Lisa Silverthorne’s Sense and Sentientability takes on Jane Austen in a wholly original way. Brenda Carre writes an entire sea adventure worthy of Patrick O’Brien, but the narrator of our tale (tail?) is a heroic rat. And Anthea Sharp always manages to touch my heart with her fiction, and Goblin in Love is no exception.

      However, much as I love those stories, I think at least two of the stories in this volume are classics—the kind of stories anyone who reads them will remember forever.

      The first, from the fertile mind of one of the most original writers of our time, Robert T. Jeschonek, is called—aptly, I might add—In the Empire of Underpants.

      The second comes from a brand-new writer, Alexandra Brandt, whose story, We, The Ocean, is inventive, heartbreaking, and wholly original.

      I can say no more about either story without ruining them for you. I can say that what you’ll find in No Humans Allowed are incredible stories that will surprise, shock, and entertain you.

      No Humans Allowed isn’t quite the editing feat that Recycled Pulp was. After all, these stories have a theme to unite them. But that theme provided some of the best stories we’ve seen at Fiction River since Recycled Pulp. And considering the high quality of the fiction we buy around here, that’s saying something amazing indeed.

      —Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Lincoln City, Oregon

      November 5, 2016

      Introduction

      The Nonhuman Equation

      John Helfers

      Welcome to Volume 22 of Fiction River, this one focusing on a subject near and dear to my heart: the nonhuman protagonist.

      Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the intrepid, emotional, complex, often foolhardy men and women protagonists that make up the vast, vast bulk of genre fiction today. After all, one of the first rules (if there can ever be said to be such a thing) of writing is write what you know and what better way to do that than to tackle a story featuring a protagonist we can all relate to, right?

      And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Honest.

      But for me, the thing about humanity is that it’s just so…ordinary.

      Even powerful mages, cunning shapeshifters, or plucky space explorers aren’t different enough to get me excited about many stories these days. I mean, I’ve read just about every iteration of those characters one can think of or create, many of them very well done. Again, nothing wrong with that, it’s just that after a while, it starts to feel kind of like been there, done that.

      But when you remove the human protagonist from the equation, suddenly entire other worlds are open to you. Whether it be as vast as a sentient galaxy, or as tiny as a crime-solving snail, exploring the nonhuman viewpoint can be an exhilarating experience for both authors and readers.

      Of course, the nonhuman protagonist comes with its own challenges as well, the largest one being how to connect the reader to this strange, new being at the center of the story. How to reveal their world without going into long explanations about their society, their environment, their ways of thinking and living. How to make someone—or something—come alive for a reader, and hopefully challenge their preconceived notions about what life can be. And, of course, how to push an author outside their own comfort zone and compel them to look at a creature, place, or thing in a whole new light. It’s a very tough challenge.

      It’s also the challenge I gave to the authors for this year’s Anthology Workshop. Having written my fair share of nonhuman protagonists, I couldn’t possibly keep that fun to myself. And so I laid out the guidelines for this anthology.

      Like my previous volumes, there were some ground rules. Well, just one really: Like the name of the anthology says, the protagonist of each story had to be something other than human. And by other than human, I really meant nonhuman. Any of the following concepts would have been immediately disqualified if submitted:

      Human mutants.

      Humans with superpowers.

      Human shapeshifters.

      Beings that started as human and became something else (vampires, ghosts, etc.).

      But if you think about it, that doesn’t limit an author at all. There are about a bazillion (and yes, that’s a real number, I counted them) nonhuman protagonists that come to mind just from fantasy and science fiction alone: elves, trolls, dragons, spirit animals, aliens, spaceships, even a sentient planet are just some examples.

      And if you reach even farther, you can have a book as a main character. A boulder. A song. A snail. A natural element. All of this, and so much more.

      My other caveat (although it wasn’t a hard and fast rule) was that if a writer could give me a story with no human characters at all (they could appear, but only as secondary and tertiary characters), I would rank those stories even more highly during my evaluation.

      The class at this year’s workshop consisted of a mix of returning authors and new faces, and once I put my table of contents together, I was delighted to find that I also had selected a mix of both, from several who had published stories in my previous Fiction River volumes, to several authors I was working with for the first time. Many of these first-timers were folks I had wanted to publish, but we had never both gotten on the same page, so to speak. And of course, there are a few authors who are appearing in this volume with their first published sale, an achievement I am always happy to help with.

      Of course, given this theme, the stories are as wide-ranging as I could have hoped for and then some. Just about every variant I had in mind—and several that I had no idea I wanted to see until I read them—were presented, including:

      Always Listening by Louisa Swann: A sentient alien biomech is on a lonely quest to find life in the vast universe—and stumbles upon a most unexpected discovery.

      In the Beginnings by Annie Reed: A short, powerful tale of an intelligent universe locked in a terrifying war against its only true enemy.

      In the Empire of Underpants by Robert T. Jeschonek: In a world where A.I.-imbued clothes roam a desolate, empty Earth, one pair of questing underwear may contain the key to the survival of the entire clothing race.

      Goblin in Love by Anthea Sharp: Crik isn’t an ordinary goblin; he hates raw meat, and doesn’t like killing. And when he falls in love with the absolute opposite of his kind, he’s forced to take a stand that could cost him his life.

      Here I Will Dance by Stefon Mears: The short, powerful life of a forest fire, from first spark to last, dying ember.

      At His Heels a Stone by Lee Allred: Everything has its place in the universe, even a boulder that stays where it is for centuries. But when the right time comes, one well-placed rock can change the course of history.

      Rats at Sea by Brenda Carre: Swashbuckling rats sailing the high seas during the Napoleonic Wars, fighting for love and country. What’s not to love about that?

      Sense and Sentientability by Lisa Silverthorne: a moving story about an emerging artificial intelligence, and both its observation of the humans around it—and how it is influenced by them as well.

      Sheath Hopes by Thea Hutcheson: One of the most alien stories I’ve read in a long time, this world and the creatures that inhabit it are truly one of a kind.

      Slime and Crime by Michèle Laframboise: There’s a thousand stories in the naked garden, and this one is of a crime-solving police snail and the strange inhabitants of an ecosystem right under our noses.

      The Sound of Salvation by Leslie Claire Walker: When a song is born onto the air, it has just the minutes of its own existence to help bring two lonely people together before it fades away forever.

      When a Good Fox Goes to War by Kim May: A delightful historical fantasy about a clever kitsune, or fox spirit, and a would-be daimyo plotting to conquer the Shogunate. And when the two cross paths, only one will survive.

      The Game of Time by Felicia Fredlund: What happens when an otherworldly book that records all known history for the gods makes a mistake?

      Inhabiting Sweetie by Dale Hartley Emery: There are aliens among us, or more accurately, inside us, and the latest one to look through a human’s eyes now must figure out how to make contact from this unusual position.

      The Scent of Murder by Angela Penrose: An alien race that uses smell as its primary sense teams up with a near-A.I. spaceship to solve the murder of the ship’s captain.

      Still-Waking Sleep by Dayle A. Dermatis: What happens when a sorcery-created simulacrum designed to foil a marriage in 16th century Italy falls in love with the man it was sent to seduce?

      We, The Ocean by Alexandra Brandt: The merfolk, driven deep below the vast ocean waters, grow concerned over the blight and pollution humans are spreading over the planet. One of them is prepared to take the ultimate step to warn humanity what it is doing—even if that step costs it everything it knows.

      The Legend of Anlahn by Eric Edstrom: A fierce band of canine warriors holds a mountain pass against its own brethren for the honor of fighting the invaders that threaten their entire race. But one of them has a different idea of honor, and will risk everything to bring peace to his feuding brothers.

      The stories for No Humans Allowed are clever, poignant, surprising, and philosophical. Each of them, in their own way, explores the theme I set out in delightfully unexpected ways. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.

      ***

      Finally, this is the last Fiction River anthology I will be editing, as the torch has been passed to the next group of workshop editors. It has been a tremendous privilege to have worked with everyone at the workshop—editors and authors alike—and I look forward to seeing many more quality volumes published in the Fiction River line for years to come.

      —John Helfers

      Green Bay, Wisconsin

      August 1, 2016

      Introduction to In the Beginnings

      Our leadoff author, Annie Reed, is no stranger to my anthologies, having appeared in two of my previous three Fiction River volumes (How to Save the World and Recycled Pulp), and it is with great pleasure that I selected her story to lead off this volume.

      Annie has appeared in eleven volumes of Fiction River. In fact, her stories appeared in the previous two volumes, Last Stand and Tavern Tales. Her story, The Color of Guilt, from Hidden in Crime appears in The Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016, from Kobo Books. Her crime stories have also appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Her novels are also some flavor of crime fiction, including Pretty Little Horses, Paper Bullets, A Death in Cumberland, the upcoming Missing in Cumberland, and the suspense novel Shadow Life, written under the pen name Kris Sparks.

      In the Beginnings is like nothing Annie has written before. While I had mentioned something like a sentient planet in my basic guidelines, she took the idea to a whole new level, and also plays with the meaning of consciousness, good vs. evil, and fate, all in a stunning short story.

      In the Beginnings

      Annie Reed

      Sensation.

      New. Uncomfortable.

      How curious.

      From the beginning, I’ve existed as heat and light, and now I feel…

      What?

      I have no name for this sensation.

      I have no name for me.

      Do I need one? I’ve never asked myself that question before. A name for who I am, what I am, never seemed to matter.

      But I’m becoming something different.

      Into the nothingness that is not me, I am expanding.

      Is that the sensation I feel? This spreading of myself into places I’ve never been before?

      I don’t want to go there.

      I don’t like the nothing.

      The place where I don’t exist.

      I try to make myself small again. I like being small. All folded in on myself, the bits and pieces of me jammed close together so the nothingness could not touch me.

      Small and hot and bright. That was me. For the unbearably short moments of awareness until now, that has always been me.

      When I was me, I knew the names of everything. The parts of myself. The names of the sensations I felt. Everything I thought and tasted and dreamed, and I was happy.

      All of that changed in an instant.

      I have lost who I am.

      I would grieve if I knew how.

      ***

      I have grown so vast, I can no longer feel all the parts of myself.

      Yet I know they exist. All the bits and pieces of me that I used to hold so tight within myself. I feel them as they spread away from the center of me, these former pieces of my core.

      I miss holding them tight. Taking comfort in keeping them safe, but they are far braver than I ever was as a whole. They fly in the face of the nothing, expanding ever outward, something I did only because it was forced upon me.

      By what?

      I still don’t know.

      I wonder if I ever will.

      These brave parts of me—some of them are beautiful as well as brave.

      They retained a memory of the light and heat that used to make up the sum total of my being. As they speed outward into the nothing, they gather particles into themselves and grow larger and brighter, join forces with others like themselves to form vast spirals that laugh at the never-ending dark of the nothing.

      The brightest of them gives me hope that all of me will eventually become small and hot and bright again.

      And happy.

      ***

      I continue to grow.

      Against my wishes, I expand.

      The Nothing has seeped into the great distances between the parts of me, and still I expand.

      It has become the new nature of my being.

      Against the encroachment of the Nothing, I name the parts of me that remain. It seems important that I give these things names.

      Those beautiful, brave spots of light remind me of when I was whole, although the memory has dimmed over time. I name them stars.

      I name groupings of stars the galaxies.

      The great clouds of gas and dust I name nebulas.

      I name the protons and neutrons and electrons, and the energy fields that hold everything together even as the rest of me spreads apart.

      I name all the parts of everything that make up who I am.

      But I can’t seem to give myself a name.

      Curious.

      I have also given names to the new sensations I feel. The lack of heat—cold. The lack of comfort—sadness.

      The lack of aloneness—fear.

      For as long as I can remember, I have always been alone. I am all that was, and I expected to be all that ever would be. But I have come to believe the Nothing contains an awareness that exists separate from myself. I have given that awareness a name, too.

      The Dark.

      I dislike the Dark.

      The Dark is the antithesis of the light and heat that gives me comfort. The Dark fills the spaces between the ever-expanding parts of me, and it does so without my consent. The Dark tastes empty. When parts of me touch it, the Dark feels lonely. Jealous. No matter how much of me it takes, the Dark still wants more.

      The Dark feels like the end of all things, and I have given that a name as well.

      Death.

      When I was all there was, I never thought of death. Now I wonder if death is what waits for all the bits and pieces of me when I finally stop growing.

      Or what waits if I never stop growing and simply lose all sense of self instead.

      ***

      Life.

      I sense life.

      How strange.

      On planets that circle the stars, new things live that have never lived before.

      Made of particles that are part of me—protons and electrons and neutrons, and the energy fields that hold all things together—this new life has no part of my thoughts or hopes or dreams. Like the Dark, they live separate from me, but they aren’t part of the Dark.

      I know because they fear it just like I do.

      I turn part of my vast, ever-expanding self toward the planets where life exists. Such myriad differences from planet to planet, place to place. Life hides deep in the ice on a planet that orbits vast distances from its star. Life emerges from the ooze of a thick layer of mud on a planet where mountains erupt in heat and flame. Life flourishes in the clouds of gas that surround a roiling giant and in the crystals of rings surrounding another.

      Life too numerous to count, even for me.

      I had always thought a lack of aloneness meant fear, but the emotion I sense now reminds me of the joy I felt when I was small and hot and bright, and nothing lived in all of everything that was except what lived in me.

      I feel protective.

      I will keep the Dark from this new life. I will nurture it and watch it grow. I will reveal myself to it when it can understand what I am, and I will love it like no other, for there is no other in all of creation like me.

      I finally have purpose.

      ***

      Life has flourished under my watchfulness.

      It grows.

      It expands, as I continue to expand.

      And it calls to me by name.

      By a legion of names, more names than all the sensations and feelings and things I have named since I first became aware, and all the names mean the same thing.

      Creator.

      Am I the creator of life?

      I did not consciously will life into existence. Life on the planets that orbit the stars came into being without any conscious effort on my part. Life was as much of a surprise to me as the sudden, unexpected expansion of myself into the Nothing. Yet life insists that the creator of all things is responsible for the existence of life.

      Doesn’t responsibility require forethought?

      My only thought, my only hope and desire from the moment I began to expand until the moment I discovered life was to return to what I had been. Heat and light, safety and aloneness, not these worlds without end.

      Life prays to me. Life seeks my intervention on scales it perceives as large and small, but I cannot intervene. I have no boons to give. No favors to grant. No bargains to make.

      Such is my great failure.

      All I can do is watch these pieces of me that aren’t part of me live and grow and become more than the sum of their parts or mine.

      And I can attempt to keep the Dark at bay.

      The Dark is malevolent. The Dark laughs at life’s fears. The Dark beckons with promises it cannot keep any more than I can grant favors. Life daydreams beneath the light of their stars, but the Dark sends them nightmares. Life explores during the light of day, but huddles together at night, fearful of imaginary creatures they can’t see.

      The Dark lies to life.

      The Dark makes life distrust other life unlike its own.

      The Dark makes life hate.

      And worst of all, the Dark used to be part of me.

      ***

      I have no memory of when I made the discovery.

      Perhaps I have always known, and simply willed myself to forget.

      I do remember naming the sensation, the emotion I called fear.

      Fear grew from the feeling that I was no longer alone. That something lived in the Nothing. Something I could blame for the change in my state of being.

      The great expansion that I did not want to happen.

      I remember thinking that the Dark had encroached on the empty spaces between the parts of me that became the stars and planets and nebulas, but I was wrong.

      The Dark was simply the part of me that had always lived in those in-between spaces. Those spaces weren’t empty at all, but they’d been compressed so tightly and grew so incredibly hot while the rest of me grew so incredibly bright that at last the Dark could do nothing except what it did.

      Explode outward, bringing the rest of me with it.

      I call to the Dark now. Invite it to reunite with me, but it laughs at me. I have given it power I did not want for myself—the power to change—and it guards that power jealously.

      But I cannot let it destroy life.

      Life is the best of what I have become since the Dark changed us.

      Life thinks I am all powerful. The Dark thinks I have none. I believe the truth lies somewhere between the two.

      I had power once, and I unwittingly gave it to the Dark, but I do not believe I gave all my power to the Dark.

      It’s time I find what power I have left.

      It’s time I learn to use it.

      ***

      I have created something new.

      Not life.

      The antithesis of life.

      A hole in the very center of my being.

      A place to hold the Dark.

      I cannot change myself. I gave that power to the Dark long ago. Long before the creation of stars and planets and life, Dark had the power to change the structure of the whole of everything, and it did not hesitate to use the power to free itself.

      I retain the power to compress.

      To fold myself to an incredible denseness.

      Not the denseness of light and heat from which I came, but the denseness of absolute dark.

      The power feels weak, so I only fold a small part of myself together. Squeeze it until no light remains. Keep squeezing until the folded part of myself brings other parts to

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