Into the well-weird today with Addison Smith and his tale The Psychic Fish Hates You. Addison Smith is an author and machinist in northern New York. He writes fantasy, science fiction and horror and has had stories appear in Fireside Magazine and Daily Science Fiction.


The Psychic Fish Hates You
by Addison Smith


The psychic fish hates you. It doesn’t tell you in words. It doesn’t implant the thought. It just looks at you, eyes wide in its Tupperware home. Mayonnaise. You grab the jar and close the door.

The psychic fish hates mayonnaise. It’s a stupid thing to remember. Did it tell you, or did you pick it up yourself? Is it just another scrap of memory you cling to, trying to hold on to what you have? Not that you ever really had the psychic fish. That wasn’t its way. From the day you brought it home from the fair, fat and golden-scaled, it was its own fish. The carnival worker said it would grow with love. Is that why it became too big for its bowl? Too big for your heart?

Your heart, laid bare to its fins, to its bulbous eyes, so quick to dismiss, its fins never deeming you worthy.

The psychic fish hates touching. It prefers to keep to itself. It has its own music, books, friends, thoughts, and you’re not a part of those. You never were. When you couldn’t take it, the silence, the loneliness, you bought it a friend. Another fish for it to play with.
You open the refrigerator, and the psychic fish watches you. Its friend is gone, flushed away. It blames you. It hated its friend, but still it blames you. 

The psychic fish hates friends. It hates birthdays and parties and proposals and tears. You give it everything, and it hates everything. 

You stare into its fish eyes, a gold blur in your vision. You close your eyes, tight, tears streaming down your cheeks.

The psychic fish hates you.

It hates the minnow net, the walk to the bathroom, the smell of toilet bowl cleaner, the instant relief of letting go, of finally saying goodbye, and I’m done with you. 

The psychic fish hates the sewer. 

​You walk to your room, and listen to sad songs, and slowly, you forget.

​We've self-editing androids and abandoned dolls for you now in two new poems – Inhuman Nature and Dolls – from Deborah L. Davitt. Deborah was raised in Nevada, received her MA in English from Penn State, and currently lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and son.  For more about her Rhysling-nominated poetry, short stories, and novels, please see www.edda-earth.com.

​
Inhuman Nature

He had a laugh that everyone reviles –
the blank-eyed type that doesn’t touch the soul;
he pushed the loan papers across his desk,
and they prepared to sign their lives away.
 
They remembered the plastic of his smile
as they drove to their new home, wondering
what had taken from the man such a toll –
what had sent his humanity astray.
 
But as they enjoyed both their garden and
retirement, they sequestered that file
from their memory banks, deleted it whole, 
like the things their coworkers used to say.
 
For an android, it’s hardly denial –
editing themselves makes their lives a stroll.


Dolls

The grove of trees had been
popular among teens
as a place for necking
or smoking pot,
 
but now, hanging from tree limbs,
little cherub heads, dangling
from nooses of their own hair,
always smiling, always smiling.
 
With their broken eyes, they’re
always watching, always watching;
they see everything we do.
 
Made of plastic, made of china –
torn and ragged clothes;
arms missing, legs missing,
little naked torsos
clatter hollowly.
  
Each little ruined face
seems somehow individual;
each time we venture there,
the collection seems to have grown.
 
Always watching –
I look for faces that I know
– always smiling –
afraid to find my own.

What if someone with a modern MBA and a background in startups wrote a guide to dragon slaying? We think you'd get something like Siegfried 2.0 by Nathan Susnik. Nathan is a research biologist and medical writer who was born in the USA but currently living in Hanover, Germany. In his free time he edits for the professional journal Medical Writing. His fiction has been published by Gallery of Curiosities and is forthcoming from Shoreline of Infinity and Devilfish Review. You can also follow him on Twitter at @NathanSusnik


Siegfried 2.0
by Nathan Susnik
 
Most knights Google “dragon”, read a couple articles, think they’re experts, and then go out and try to act like dragons.

Most knights die.
 
You. Are. Not. A. Dragon.

You don’t slay dragons by acting like a dragon. You cannot fly; you cannot breathe fire.
 
Do I need to repeat that?
 
You are a human.

So slay the dragon with innovation and disruptive thinking. Slay the dragon with compassion.

Don’t forget compassion.

No, not for the dragon. If you show a dragon compassion, it will bite your head off. It’s not a Shetland sheepdog. You show compassion for your teammates.
 
Yes, you need teammates.

We all know the story, right?
 
Once upon a time, man pulls sword from stone, rides out on trusty horse, runs into obstacles, pulls self over said obstacles by own boot straps, slays dragon, wins Time Magazine Dragonslayer of the Year.
 
But this is real life, so it goes like this:
 
Once upon a time, woman has idea, assembles team, starts company, NewLance™.

NewLance™ fails, half of team dies.

Woman gets depressed, doubts self. Rick threatens to quit. Woman pulls it together, enlists new, more innovative blacksmith. New, more innovative blacksmith convinces Rick to stay and invest more money. Woman rebrands NewLance™ as SwordTech™. Woman incorporates SwordTech™ to protect self from future failure, puts together new team, uses new tactics.
 
Do you know how to catch a bird with your bare hand?
 
To catch a bird with your bare hands, you need smarts – and stamina – but mostly smarts. You get bird in confined area. You put your hands in the air. You run around like a goon. The bird flies into the air.

You keep it there at all cost.

Flying takes a tremendous amount of energy. After a while the bird tires and lands. It will roost, completely docile, and remain so until you climb up, pluck it off its perch, and...

Now, fire breathing takes more energy than flying, oodles more.

So you kill a dragon like you catch a bird.

But you’ll also need oodles more smarts and oodles more stamina to slay a dragon.

# # # # #

Train your team hard, and follow the rules.

Rules for slaying dragons:

1. Dragons do not breathe fire at prey. Fire chars flesh; fire chars calories. Dragons need calories, so they do not breath fire at their prey. Fire breathing is only used for territorial display, sexual selection in mates, and defense.

2. If you want a dragon to breath fire, scare the crap out of it. The best way to do this is with pyrotechnics. They cost pennies on the dollar to any other method available.

3. Get dragon in confine area and know its range.

4. Make oodles of noise.

5. Stay out of the way of the fire.

6. The dragon won't fly away. Its wings are vestigial. A 3000 kilo animal cannot fly without the help of a jet engine.

7. Dragons are slow. They hunt through by waiting, like a snake. Agility is your advantage. Have your team run until the dragon tires. Constantly change directions, dodge, shift, zig-zag in and out.

8. Never, ever show the dragon compassion. Rick showed compassion, and this is what happened: 

Rick: Crap, my arm's off.

Me: I'm not a doctor, Rick. See a doctor.

Rick: No health insurance.

Me: Why not?

Rick: I invested all of my money SwordTech™.

Me: Eggs? Basket? Christ, Rick, didn’t you learn anything during your MBA?

Rick - keels over.
 
9. If you lose an arm, don't dwell on it. Your investment in SwordTech™ will pay enough to found a cutting-edge prosthetics company.

10. When the dragon is tired, it will look pitiful. Walk up and slide your SwordTech™ technology into its heart. Do not show it compassion. Slaying a dragon is the only way to truly defeat the beast.

It is the only way to succeed.

It is the only way to become Time Magazine, Dragonslayer of the Year.

​In today's story – Once Upon a Monday by E.E. King – something wicked this way comes, wrapped in a beautiful package but smelling like hatred.

E.E. King is a performer, writer, biologist and painter.  Ray Bradbury said King’s stories "are marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.” 

King has won awards and is published widely. She’s worked with children in Bosnia, crocodiles in Mexico, frogs in Puerto Rico, mushrooms in Montana, archaeologists in Spain and butterflies in South Central Los Angeles. Her books include Dirk Quigby’s Guide to the Afterlife and Another Happy Ending. You can find her at http://www.elizabetheveking.com 


Once Upon a Monday
by E.E. King

Once upon a Monday, which is not a very popular day in most social circles, a wicked witch arrived in Hollywood. She claimed that she had come from Honduras where she had been battling oppression, but nothing could be further from the truth. In reality she came from a planet not so very far away. A planet where it was always Monday. A planet so turvy-topsy and versa-visa that plants grew with their roots in the air and their leaves in the ground. 

She said her name was Yadira Esperanza and that her name meant “hope,” but this was not the case. In fact, she was so evil, that paintings dissolved when she glanced at them, leaving empty frames. Books spontaneously burst into flames. Daisies, symbols of love and innocence, grew petals sharp as pointed steel. Even sweet Jasmine began to reek like week old fish. And humming birds froze in midflight before dropping to the ground, lifeless as confetti.

Yadira opened a school for girls. Their parents dropped off sweet children and returned to find them monsters. Clever lies dropped sweet as candy from Yadira’s tongue. She wove nets of deceit so strong and beautiful that the parents were trapped like helpless flies.

Yadira was short, round and very, very beautiful, with long, velvet hair and bottomless eyes. Because Yadira came from a planet where life was cold and even the stars duplicitous, she found Hollywood very easy. Here people believed in appearances.

No one looked beneath the surface. No one wondered why beauty smelled like hatred, or noticed that the creek that by her school stank. Fish floated down stream belly-up, frogs grew extra limbs and squirrels developed evil eyes that never closed. The girls in Yadira’s care grew into woman who spread sorrow like butter and sprinkled misery like sugar. 

Yadira and her girls opened a bakery where heart-break, bitter-sweet as dark chocolate was packed in shiny silver foil boxes and tied with red, satin ribbons. Many lovers who received these bonbons married, and Yadira became famous as a confectioner of consummation. No one seemed to know, or care, that these marriages ended in beatings and sometimes worse. 

Yadira grew fat, happy and careless. When she was not vigilant, you could see that her teeth were sharp as needles, that in the moonlight her pupils were narrow as a goat’s and that she had no fingernails. Still, even now, she was rarely that careless.

Whenever someone noticed what they should not have seen, something would happen. Someone they loved would sicken or die. Their house would burn down, their child break a leg or their pet would get killed by a speeding car. They would be so full of grief that they would forget – or not remember – which is almost the same thing.

Yadira grew old, but only because people were watching. Witches, as you know, never grow old. They are born old and thereafter grow in any direction they like. 

All around Yadira, discord flowed like the rain in Honduras, the land she had never seen.

One moonlit night, when the seeds of discontent had grown as big Banyan trees, when malice as delicate and pernicious as blind weed reached curling tendrils out through the Southland, Yadira vanished.

Some children too young to have been to her school, or to have eaten Yadira’s chocolates, swore that they had seen a tiny figure growing larger as it flew, until, silhouetted briefly against the moon, they saw an enormous witch. But they were not believed.

Yadira was mourned. Women in the confectionary shop tore out their hair. More than one of her students leapt from the school roof, pursued by demons of grief. The Mayor erected a golden statue in her honor. No one noticed that it immediately tarnished, developing a sooty black patina that scattered spores of sorrow in the moonlight.

She arrived in Honduras, with curling golden hair, and eyes as blue as a cloudless tropical sky. She said her name was Ashley. She came from Hollywood. She was beautiful as the stars, as lovely as the delicate white blossoms of Oleander, that fell silently around her, like a million, tiny, burnt moths.

Today we head into Irish legend with a new poem by James Matthew Byers about The Morrígan, the phantom queen, the Triple Goddess, the Crow Goddess... 

James Matthew Byers lives in Alabama with his wife, kids, and tortoises. He is a published poet and artist who loves fantasy, horror, and science fiction.​ You can find him at http://www.Twitter.com/MattByers40 &
http://jamesmatthewbyers.wordpress.com


Conundrum of the Irish Sea
by James Matthew Byers


The Morrígan, the phantom queen,
The crow and battle brand,
Establishes the gory scene
Unleashed at her command.
Arresting fate amid a flight,
Foretelling death and doom,
Detesting mortals feigning might,
Eclipsing them with gloom
Akin to how the Valkyries 
And Norns of Northmen wove 
Entangled webs of alchemy
Embedded in a cove.
The tombs prepared by way of crow
As wings spread open wide
Above the warring mistletoe
Enlisting those who died.
Espied, endangered ere the foot 
Befell the marching men.
Supremacy, the ash and soot,
Authority, her grin,
The Morrígan enlarged her girth,
Transforming sword and shield,
Awarding those renewed rebirth
And cattle for a field.
A yield unlike the years before,
An ample yolk, divine.
In turn the humans would adore 
And workshop her design.
Protecting those of highest rank,
Encircled by her beak,
Precise and pure as others sank,
Her power made them weak.
For any in her favor's care,
Amassing hordes of wealth 
Combined with wit and skill to spare 
Equates to blooming health.
The Morrígan, at times as three,
And other times as one,
Conundrum of the Irish Sea,
Is how the war is won.