Issue 84 September 2020 Flash Fiction Online September 2020

Vadis reaches for the ray of light stabbing through the single hole left in the shutters, but her mother grabs her, drags her away from the beam.

“Why, mama?” whines Vadis. “I want to see the sun.”

Her mother holds her, squishing her with work-hardened arms. Mother’s arms have gotten thinner since father went away, but they don’t have bruises anymore.

“No,” she says, “Tomorrow is the Liar’s Sun. We have to keep it all out.”

“But why?” whines Vadis

“Because it will make you say things,” says mother. “Terrible things. Now hush, and help me find the beams.”

And mother goes searching for sunbeams, pushing pebbles and wood wedges and wax into the holes.

But Vadis still wants to see the sun. She has to settle for watching the bright dot crawl across the floor, up the wall, and onto the ceiling, fading from white to yellow to bloody red. Only when it is completely gone and mother plugs the last hole in the shutters does she unbar the door.

All over Gliven latches fall, doors are unbarred, shadows scurry from unlit cabins. Neighbors say hello and goodbye. No one will go outside tomorrow. Knives and spears are buried deep in the loam, so they may not be buried in men’s chests when the Liar’s Sun is upon them.

Vadis and her mother hurry, fetching water, feeding the sheep and chickens, emptying the night-soil onto the midden heap. Old man Raven hobbles by, lantern held low to the ground. Vadis is surprised. Usually it is young Raven who carries the night-light through the village, who looks for fires and robbers and brawls.

“Sissla,” croaks old man Raven in his hoarse voice, leering at mother, but mother grabs Vadis and pushes her inside, then heaves the thick, oaken bar over the cast-iron hooks set into the doorframe.

In the night Vadis wakes to see Mother by the door.

“Mama?” whispers Vadis, but Mother does not react. She stands by the door, wrapping thin strips of cured leather around the hooks and the bar, tying it into place. Father never used to do that, but father is no longer with them. Vadis’ feet glide over the worn floorboards. She reaches, putting her hand gently on Mother’s leg.

“Go back to bed,” Mother says, gruff, but then comes to sit by Vadis’ side and stroke her hair before going to bed herself.

Still, Vadis cannot sleep. Morning finds her itching tired, sweaty and weak all at once.

The Liar’s Sun is here.

Time passes slowly. By noon, the cottage is hot and stifling. Someone screams outside and Vadis wants to see. She climbs up on the bench to remove the wax plug from the shutters, but her mother knocks her hand away.

“It’s the Liar’s Sun,” she says. “It drives everyone mad. Death and anger follow.”

“How, mama?” Vadis says.

But Mother is silent, like she’s always silent when Vadis asks about the Liar’s Sun.

But then she speaks.

“It makes you say things,” she says. “Lies, all of them, to make people angry, angry enough to hurt each other.”

Right then someone hammers on their door, heavy fists pounding on the wood.

“Open,” a voice shouts, muffled by the closed door. It sounds raw, as if it has been screaming for a long time. Still, it sounds familiar. Vadis puts her ear against the door, but the voice is gone.

Then it comes again, a man’s voice.

“Open, Sissla, open, I beg you!”

Mother curls into a ball on the floor, pressing her hands to her ears.

Vadis shakes. The mad men have come. She wants to cry, to run away, but there is nowhere to run, only their little cabin, and Mother, curled up on the earthen floor.

“Vadis,” the voice shouts, “Sissla, open your door!”

The almost familiar voice sounds kind, not mad at all. Outside, the sun must be shining from the sky.

“Vadis,” says the voice. “Open the door. I am your father.”

But father is gone, since the last Liar’s Sun.

“Sissla, I beg you…” The voice trails off, as if too tired to shout. Mother is crying, holding her head and sobbing. Vadis presses her ear firmer to the door. “I love you,” comes the voice. “I have always loved you.”

Mother’s hand lands on the door by Vadis’ head.

“Vadis, no,” she says through her tears, her eyes closed. She shakes her head, slowly, as if her head is too heavy to lift.

But father is outside, in the sun. Vadis wants to see him, see what the sun has done to him, ask him why he left. She climbs up on the bench, yanks on the shutters. They rattle, refusing to budge. Vadis waits for mother to stop her, but mother is by the door, slumped on the ground. So Vadis tugs again, and the shutters break open, sunlight washing over her.

It isn’t father outside. It’s young man Raven, unshaven, clothes torn, fists bruised.

“You’re not my father,” Vadis says, but the sun twists her words. “You are my father,” she says, and knows it to be true. She knows a lot of things to be true.

“I am your father,” young man Raven says, nodding. He looks tired, hopeful.

Mother shies away from the light, pressing herself into the cabin’s darkness. Vadis beckons to her.

“Come into the sun, Mama,” she says. She wants to say something about how safe it is, but that is not the truth, and the sun won’t let her say it. “It is warm,” she says instead.

Mother shakes her head.

“I am old and ugly,” she says from the darkness.

“You are kind and joyful,” says young man Raven, the sun gleaming in his hair.

Tears run down Mother’s cheeks. Vadis can’t remember father ever saying such things to her. Yet young man Raven’s words feel true, true as sunlight. She reaches for mother. Together they unbar the door.

The deer, who is not really a deer, flees.

Her heart beats frantic against the prison of her ribs. White froth rises in her mouth to choke her. She dares not slow, though, nor stop to rest. Else the man who loves her will find her again, and there are worse things he can cause her to be than merely cervine.

The man, the hunter, follows her through these dark woods. She hears his footsteps all around her, but maybe that is just the gallop of her heartbeat, or the echo of her hooves against the frozen ground. Her magic is older than his, but his is the stronger, and spellcraft flutters away from her on the deer’s ragged breath. Perhaps he isn’t everywhere at once, not really. But of course he doesn’t need to be.

“My heart, my soul, my beauty.” His voice shatters the icy moonlight that slices between bare trees, and the deer nearly loses her footing. The world is too wide around her through the deer’s eyes, so large it crushes the air from her lungs. No, no, up again: there is no escape, no refusing to play the game. If she lies down at his feet and denies him the thrill of his chase, the stories they tell afterward will only say how much she wanted this. “I will hang your head in my hall, where men will sing your praises for centuries to come. You should be honored … “

The deer does not want centuries of praise. She wants only this lifetime, the blood that rushes in her ears, the familiar contours and spaces of the body that used to be hers. There is no time left to wish for what has been taken, though. Now there is only the hope of denying the hunter the object of his appetite. Her hooves find purchase on a scrabble of dirt and her legs recoil for a sudden change of direction: saltation and exaltation. An arrow pierces the air where she would have been and strikes, quivering, in an oak tree. She mourns the ghost-self that would have died there, and she mourns the lost resolution of this chase as well.

Somewhere, everywhere, the hunter is laughing. Not in mockery, but in surprised awe. He loves her as the thirsting man loves the water, he tells her. His reverence is no smaller for its distortion.

The copse of trees falls away around her and she sees white light sliding over silver pelts before she recognizes her new companions. A cluster of forest deer, all does. Their tails flick up stark white at the speed of her passage—

She stops running.

They do not look up again when she returns to join them while they graze. Her heart still hammers her ribcage but the little patch of winter grass is tender where it has slept beneath its blanket of snow. Another doe grazes her, flank to flank, and she meets golden-brown eyes. She musters what reserves of magic are left to her and listens to the shimmer of moonlight on snow, the warm swirl of misty breath. Yes. Perhaps.

She cannot take her own shape back. Not while he has anything to say about it. But she can, she thinks, press it upon another.

The arrow screams out a warning. Can you ever forgive me? she wants to ask the wide unblinking eyes of the doe. But she has no voice for the question, and the only answer to be had is the arrow’s bite. The other doe’s blood slashes the snow black. She stumbles to her knees as her herd panics and flees. Only the deer who is not really a deer stands and watches, and feels the earth tremble under his approach.

She makes the deer-shape cling to the other doe, several breaths past the moment when her rolling eyes still and her heaving sides quiet. She watches his face, drinks down that moment of doubt. His eyes shift upward—to her. The paean on his tongue thickens, threatening to curdle into something uglier.

Best not to linger. She changes the shape of the spell on the breath of an apology to the dead doe. Now she looks down into her own slack face. The hunter looks down too, and doubt and triumph war on the ancient canyons of his face.

His servants hurry forward to retrieve the cooling body. They disappear first into the night’s shadows, but he stops to look back. At the black stain upon the snow, or the doe who did not flee.

She stares him down until at last he turns to follow the rest. Only then does she turn and pick her way over the tracks the herd has left. Let him wonder. Let him doubt the shape his arrow brought down. Let him gnaw forever on the bones of his denial. She will find her way back to her own shape again, or she will live and die as a creature of the forest. But she will not die as his creature. It is a small prize, less than she deserves. More, too. But it is hers. His doubt: the only vessel of immortality she needs.

She never asked for centuries of praise. But she has survived. And in that small way, at least, she has done something worthy of praise.

Originally published in Gorgon Anthology, January 2019. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

On the morning of the last day of the faith, you bring me a bowl of fresh milk and a flower from your garden. Its petals are pristine, even though you had to carry it all the way up to the temple in the pocket of your apron. Every step is a battle now, despite your cane. The cold of the mountain seems to never leave your bones these days. You put down both offerings at the foot of the wooden statue your grandfather carved of my likeness and I notice the shaking of your hands as you do. When you kneel down on the stone steps, I know it’s not in prayer.

“His soldiers will be here by nightfall,” you say and your voice is small in the emptiness of the temple. “I saw the fires of their camp down in the valley.”

I wish I could reassure you like I once did. But I live on your milk and flowers alone now and I need to measure my words carefully.

You trace the familiar grooves in the stone steps to the altar with your fingers as you did when you were a child, waiting for you mother to finish the rites. Your hands are spotted and veiny now but your touch is still gentle.

Your words confirm the reality I was already dreading. I can feel the angry god’s presence in the valley, the smoldering power he carries with his army. He had a name once, before he abandoned it for the lie of singularity. It might not be a lie for much longer.

If words are not enough perhaps blood is. He has many humans willing to spill it for him. More than ever brought me milk or flowers or any other offering. Now there’s only you–the last and dearest. Gods are not supposed to play favorites but here you are, at the foot of my statue on the day of my death.

Before the moon rises, the soldiers will have reached this sacred place. They will have trampled your garden and slaughtered the cow whose last milk you’ve brought me. They will tear down the temple doors and storm the now empty halls. And they will bring their angry god with them to devour me.

I’ve always known this, since the moment I began. That’s all a god was back then–the promise of life and the whisper of its certain end.

By now, you too must know what’s coming. When the river god died, we both heard his cries echoing upstream until they reached the spring at the side of the mountain. His followers wept and raged but one by one they fell or bent the knee to the angry god’s army.

There will be only one to mourn me.

“Won’t you speak to me?” you ask and I don’t have the strength to answer. I have receded into the darkness–made myself comfortable here while I wait for the end. What’s left of me is hardly more than a flicker.

The silence doesn’t satisfy you. It never has. Getting to your feet takes some effort, your knuckles white as you grip your cane. You climb up the stairs to the altar and take the wooden bowl in which you keep the signs and tokens–little pieces of bone, each with a specific meaning only you understand now.

You prepare a reading like you always have. The edges of the tokens are worn down from being handled by generations before you. When the pieces fall, it’s an easy thing for me to nudge them just so. To tell you what I need to say.

You stare at the pattern in front of you. Interpretation of the tokens can be tricky sometimes, prone to error and misunderstandings–especially for a young or inexperienced priestess. You are neither and for once, the tokens couldn’t be clearer.

“You want me to leave.”

I spent months carving the path through the mountains for you. Moving boulders and melting snow, sprouting herbs and bushes ripe with berries along the trail. The journey won’t be easy but with this last gift of mine you can make it over the border. To a place where the angry god cannot reach you.

“How could you think I would leave you?”

Here is the truth: I didn’t. But nonetheless, I had to try. There is a straight line from the very first starlight in your eyes to the hurt I see in them now. The knife is in your hand. The one your grandfather used to carve my face out of the wood. The one you use to cut the flowers for your offerings. Once more, you draw the knife. A defiance. A last offering.

Without a faithful, there’ll be no god left to devour.

“No!”

My voice shakes the temple walls. The windows rattle in their hinges and the tokens dance on the altar.

You stand fast, stubborn as always.

“You have given me your life,” I say. “Now allow me to do the same for you.” To speak, to will sound into existence, is draining what is left of my strength. But it’s worth it. To save you. To convince you, somehow. “Don’t let your blood be the last gift between us.” Each word a plea. A prayer.

Don’t turn me into him.

* * *

On the last day of the faith, I wait for the angry god alone. The temple lies abandoned, save for a bowl of milk, a knife and a flower. Five pristine petals to remind me of you.

On the path I made for you, I can still sense your familiar footfall–every step taking you further away from me. Deep inside you, like a precious flower wrapped in an apron, you carry an offering of my own with you across the mountains. A part of me, a version of myself seen through your eyes. A promise of life and somewhere, in the back of your mind, a whisper.

Five years ago, I created this column to research and discuss failure and success as a writer—a column without delusions or lies that presented strategies for working in an unfair business. It was meant for me and writers like me who were still swinging after fifteen years, nowhere near the bright lights but refusing to surrender. But it has dovetailed into psychology related to vocation and craft. Last month’s column ended with suicidal thinking. How do you top that

You don’t. I’m tapping out. This is the last FXXK WRITING.

So many epitaph articles are about joy, the good times, etc. Joy already infused 60 installments. It’s not our focus here. Let’s discuss FXXK WRITING’s impact on the external world before it dies, best that I can measure.

It made money, which I desperately needed while living below the poverty line. For five years, money was the only guarantee. FFO never stiffed me and was always on time with payment. For small press publishing, that’s a miracle I will miss.

With the Publisher’s help, I turned the first year’s columns into a book. People bought it. Students ask me to sign it. It has almost 3.3 stars on Amazon and 3.8 on GoodReads (where my little sister wrote a kind review). The book was put in a bundle that paid very well—thanks to other writers named Jeff VanderMeer.

Promotion for the column poked sales of my other books, measured in the dozens.

FXXK WRITING created haters. Most were writers. The common moan—Jay is a bitter loser full of envy and jealousy, his arguments are sour grapes, his column hurts writers . . . and that title is rude. These resentments came from three groups: young writers dreaming of becoming the 1%; peers who have had a little less or a little more success than I; and, writers with impressive paydays who suffer success-bias so bad they equate sales with quality. I found all of them amusing, especially when they retreated into public silence or private chats.

FXXK WRITING also generated fans. The numbers, like the haters, are hard to gauge. Metrics include LIKES on FB, YAYS in professional writing orgs, notes in the comment section (before it was closed). Some emailed me, including my then-girlfriend and future wife (“I love FXXK WRITING because it feels honest. You can tell the writer has lived in the real world”). Writers thanked me for saying in public what they felt in private. Some were peers, others have careers and works I envy. These fans enjoyed my message—keep going, regardless of rejection or other people’s opinions; keep working, learning, and getting the work out so long as you have something to say and a desire to say it.

And I had an outlier fan. A global rockstar loved my essay “The Workaholics Creed.” Yes! It is the one you’re thinking of right now!

The Publisher always enjoyed the column, and kind words were had with assistant editors, so patrons are still alive and well in the arts. No clue if others on the masthead read it.

None of these measures were sustained or substantial, just peaks and valleys I could never predict. For some writers’ orgs, announcements about my column were met with silence, or a handful of likes, or substantial feedback and good argument (the last, however, was rare). Beyond the above, there is little proof that FXXK WRITING created a dialog outside itself. No proof there was audience growth or retraction. The first column remains the most popular, according to Google, but the rest is speculation.

These facts land as my writing career returns to limbo during a troubling context. COVID. American Racism and proto-fascistic offensives taking lives and promoting hate while being contested by the oppressed and their allies. California wildfires jumping highways. Job instability. Economic turmoil. Election madness. And, on a tinier stage, publishing became more bizarrobananapants than ever—we can’t even rely on the old crazy anymore. And my current sales have raised doubts about future success. While these truths rage, the maelstrom of my mind pounds a drum within my skull. The rhythm goes like this: Talent? Worthless. Career? Worthless. Craft? Worthless. Sales? Worthless. You? Worthless. FXXK WRITING???

NOT WORTHLESS.

None of it is worthless. Not one fucking slice. My life is manifestly better than when the column started. Gone are the roaches, ants, and mice kissing my hair goodnight; vanished is the exposed toilet in the kitchenette where I cooked, shat, and showered; absent are the nights making peace with death by earthquake, stray bullets, or a sleep-deprived car crash. I am in a home filled with love, support, and belief in my worth as a human and writer. Yet even here creeps worthlessness.

For five years I wrote about rolling with the punches of the cultural marketplace and coming up swinging. Sometimes I do. Fuck, I did today. But too many mornings I end up punching my own face and screaming “Worthless.” I’m overworked and exhausted. Which is a very good reason to end this column. I must walk the talk. Make a hard choice. Find joy. Create what only I can make. But to do that now means letting some things go. It’s time to say fuck FXXK WRITING.

I’m proud of the column. It filled an empty space between repetitive advice to newbies and the 1%’s unreplicable map to glory. It was helpful, supportive, and affirming without slinging bullshit, magical thinking, or suckling at the teat of avarice. It did not lie or patronize the audience, nor did it pull punches. Best to split before becoming self-parody.

I leave you with my hope that FXXK WRITING did good I will never see. That it may reach people long after today and give words to feelings and hopes to keep punching up. That when my career is tallied, the column will stand tall as something valuable I created within a tiny corner of the arts. So I lay it to rest with the words of a dead man who thought himself a god.

“Every man’s heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe a final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others, and makes them bleed deeper and something larger than life, then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized.”

See you in the Big Time. Cue my theme song. And hit the lights.

DR. RIDLER HAS GIVEN HIS LAST FUCK.

THERE WILL BE NO ENCORE.

JSR

THANK YOUS:

To Shara Saunsaucie White, Nick Mamatas, Carrie Vaughan, Ann Randolph, Chuck Wendig, Mark SaFranko, Matt Coward, Kameron Hurley, and my wife for support and/or inspiration.

TO ANYONE WHO READ THIS COLUMN:

Thanks! You are both smart AND attractive!

TO FLASH FICTION ONLINE:

I hope you will miss me like I will miss you. Special shout outs to Samantha Sabovitch and Stewart C. Baker, but especially our intrepid Publisher Anna Yeatts. Anna turned my Facebook rant about Chuck Wendig’s bottomless advice-trough for new writers into a five year odyssey I had not fathomed. She believed in this column’s content, attitude, and fucking title since day one, and provided me absolute freedom. For all of that and more, I am extremely grateful.

TO THE GUTTERSNIPES AND WILLFULLY BLIND WHO STILL HATE ME:

Take solace that I am gone, and “Always Believe.”