The Ludes

By Lisa M. Bradley

That might seem funny to those who’ve ever bothered to attend these performances, to say that someone didn’t belong. The audience is always a motley sort–faculty and spouses, local musicians and artists, music students and jocks who have to attend so many of these things to get credit for required courses, waitresses and office workers desperate for some culture, their school-age children (alternately awed and bored to tears), homeless folks who need a warm place to sleep for a couple of hours, mentally and physically handicapped folks hauled out as someone’s idea of a good deed, and, of course, recreational drug users with nothing better to do.

Still, he didn’t belong. He was Gothic. Not like those kids who hang out at Hot Topic and think wearing black nail polish expresses their inner turmoil, their eternal angst. I’d seen Goths there before and he wasn’t Goth, he was Gothic–dark and looming, faintly chivalrous in manner, seemingly possessed of a great, tragic secret. I thought of Bronte’s Heathcliff.

The Dream Factory

By Jenn Reese

You need some younger Ast-tlakians for a new fantasy feature the company is doing. It’s Lord of the Rings meets Kindergarten Cop. Vin Diesel to star, Woo to direct. So you need a bunch of realistic fantasy creatures, and Stan Winston figured out long ago that it was easier to hire off-world than build all these bizarre creatures from scratch. It’s a big industry secret, and you need to keep it that way. You have a tendency to brag and name-drop when you’re drunk, so you’re only mostly sure that you haven’t told anyone.

Tis the Season

By K. D. Wentworth

It was Christmas Eve and that nasty, strung-out feeling of anticipation clotted the air like a cheap deodorizer. I hate Christmas the most–all that insincere, pious yap about “peace on
earth, goodwill towards men.” I was cruising down the expressway, on my way back from dismantling an illegal manger scene someone had erected at the river park, keeping an eye out
for graffiti, you know–“Where will _you_ spend eternity?” or “Buddha lives!”–that kind of crap, spray-painted on underpasses right where impressionable schoolchildren could see it. The last rays of the setting sun were painting the highway a faint rose when I spotted a broken-down van with the metal outline of a stylized fish just above the back bumper. The short hairs crawled up the back of my neck. Them fish guys have been some of my worst busts.