The Wish Mechanics E-Book

Daniel Braum

• Herausgeber: Independent Legions Publishing
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Take a walk on the wild side, through the twilight zone of dark and dangerous and dangerously personal terrain of Daniel Braum’s short stories. Navigate impossible worlds and hidden corners of our own with damaged men and women seeking love and transcendence. There is heartache, loss, and stark poignant truths in the dark places these stories fearlessly venture, but also magic, mystery, beauty and wonder. Do you dare to dream? Do you dare to make a wish? Find out just who are The Wish Mechanics before answering. Braum effortlessly blends horror, science-fiction, and fantasy in his unique style and vision that transcends genre. Dark, literary, weird-fiction stories such as How To Make Love and Not Turn to Stone operate with the Night Time Logic of Robert Aickman. The vivid, exotic settings evoke the majestic prose of Braum’s literary hero Lucius Shepard. The genre blending fantasy and science fiction of The Canopy Crawlers and Tea in the Sahara channel “the anything can happen spiri”t of the late, great grandmaster Tanith Lee. Cover Art by George Cotronis

Leseprobe

THE WISH MECHANICS

by Daniel Braum

ISBN: 978-88-99569-49-5

Copyright (Edition) ©2017 Independent Legions Publishing

Copyright (Text) ©Daniel Braum

July, 2017

Editing: Jodi Renée Lester

Cover Art by George C. Cotronis

Digital Layout: Lukha B. Kremo

Daniel Braum

Notes

“How to Make Love and Not Turn to Stone” previously published in The Beauty of Death (Independent Legions, 2016)

“An American Ghost in Zurich” previously published in Savage Beasts (Grey Matter Press, 2015)

“The Water Dragon” previously published in Yeti. Tiger. Dragon. (Dim Shores Press, 2016)

“Canopy Crawlers” previously published in Full Unit Hook Up #6 (2004)

“The Wish Mechanics” previously published in Full Unit Hook Up #9 (2008)

“Tea in the Sahara” previously published in Kaleidetrope Magazine (2012)

For my dad

"Daniel Braum's tight, spare lines control and anchor startling, freshly-imagined flights of the exciting-fantastic.

His stories turn old tropes on their heads and invent whole new worlds for you to spend some time in.

There's an urge to race through this skilled collection from one smart story to another, wondering what's next?

But don't do it. Pause and savor instead."

-- Jack Ketchum

INTRODUCTION

Who, or what, are Wish Mechanics?

Are Wish Mechanics mechanisms by which we collectively, or individually, bring wishes into being?

Is a Wish Mechanic an expert in his or her field? An artisan, of anything, so adept at his or her craft that to the untrained eye his or her ways appear to be magic?

Is a Wish Mechanic one who seeks to bring a vision into being?

Parents. Publishers. Storytellers. Each with their own brand of mad alchemy they transmute experiences from remote corners of the wide world and or just around the corner into tales, stories, spells, hopes, and wishes meant to live again on the page and in the minds and lives of others.

I hope after reading these stories you will answer the question, and tell me.

There are so many labels, categories, and genres and sub-genres for our stories. I’ve always preferred the term fiction. As a child those were the tales where anything could happen. During most of the fifteen-year period over which most of these stories were written I was either ignorant of or deliberately ignoring genre lines. Muse, imagination, and a desire to share were enough to bring these stories to be.

If you are reading this introduction I figure there is a good chance you might be wondering what to expect from this strange book, of strange tales, from an unknown author, and just what kind of stories you will find here.

I hope you will tell me. It isn’t that I don’t want to say. It isn’t that I don’t care, although I do admit my process is not to know or care when I imagine them. What matters most to me is that you enjoy them as much as I do. Learning about the structures and history of the various genres has been an enjoyable new pursuit for me. I’ve learned enough to know that although there are relations in style, structure, and theme, the stories in this book do not fit neatly into the literary horror or weird fiction label associated with my debut collection The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales. Thus this book operates as both a wonderful pairing and a departure.

Are there science fiction stories here?

Well some of them have rocket ships and things from space and worlds beyond this one.

Are there fantasy stories here?

Well, in some of them there might be dragons of sorts, or people carry swords or go on mad adventures, and there are some very strange trees.

Are there horror stories here?

Well, they are all very dark, they don’t always end well, and there are dead people and things that might be ghosts and demons.

You’ll find something to enjoy here if you are fond of the Twilight Zone and if you delight in things interstitial, tales that defy classification, or stories that mix and operate in between and beyond the boundaries of genre.

The stories original to this collection are “A Man’s Guide to Costumes and the Most Common Ways to Get Arrested,” “Red Lights,” “Resolution Seventeen,” “The Truth About Planet X,” and “This Is the Sound of Your Dreams Dying.

All of the strange tales in this book are dark and dangerous. They don’t necessarily have happy endings. They have a strong sense of setting and place, even if the place is somewhere impossible, far away, or one that exists no longer.

Be ready to move through darkness. There are grand, impersonal, and often uncaring forces at play.

On the journey I hope you will also see the Love. Magic. Mystery. And Wonder that I have seen. And maybe you’ll even notice an overlooked wish or two.

Daniel Braum

New York, February 11, 2017

HOW TO MAKE LOVE AND NOT TURN TO STONE

Michaela sits on the cliff listening to the waves crash on the rocks below, near where the basilisks crawl. The eight-foot reptiles do not like to climb the three-hundred-foot jagged rock wall, although occasionally one does and finds its way into Francois’s garden, leaving a trail of tail tracks and petrified deer and squirrels and field mice. Mostly the basilisks like to lounge in the cliffside caves during the heat of day venturing out at night for reasons of their own. Michaela knows the lizards’ habits, and immunity to each other’s gazes must serve mundane purposes, but she doesn’t know what and can’t help but assign a mystic significance to their behavior, although she can’t put her finger on what that might be either. Francois keeps the stone animals as lawn sculptures, sick fuck that he is, which is part of why she loves him so. She’d very much like to go down to the beach with him and take him in the soft, white sand, basilisks and all, but for now sitting atop the cliff waiting for the bats will do.

“See any yet?” Francois asks.

“No,” Michaela says.

Dusk’s last light is almost gone and the sky’s evening blues are darkening in a way they both find beautiful.

“Maybe they’re not hungry,” Francois says. “Or they feel the storm coming.”

The folding chairs they sit in are close enough that they could touch hands if they wanted to. The sleeves of Michaela’s plain white T-shirt are rolled up so her tattoos show. The shirt and her jeans accentuate her breasts and hips and waist, a shape that too many men mistake as a license to stare or act stupid or worse. You have the body of a goddess, Francois said, more to himself than to her, through a flurry of kisses in this very spot the first time they had relieved each other of their clothes and conceded they were slaves to the depth of their passion. After childbirth and years of stress, gaining and losing weight and gaining it again, she hadn’t felt like a goddess—just another tired woman in the city until she saw herself through the lens of his desire. Francois Avram Chevalson. Tall and lean as a swimmer, though a stranger to the ocean that surrounds his island home. Even now in the same pressed slacks and white shirt he wore in the morning to court. His long salt-and-pepper hair still tied in a ponytail. Francois who makes her feel beautiful even on the days she hates her pale skin and thinks her lips are too pink and thin. Francois with his deep-set green eyes that change color in the sun and indicate his capacity for lust that she knows only see her, no matter what other woman, rock star or refugee, is present.