Fiction River: Feel the Love: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #31

Fiction River: Feel the Love

An Original Anthology Magazine

Edited by Mark Leslie

Series Editors

Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Dean Wesley Smith

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Michael Kowal

Thief

Lisa Silverthorne

Death’s Other Cousin

David Stier

Making Amends

Dayle A. Dermatis

Frostwitch vs. the Ravages of Time

Lauryn Christopher

The Goddess Killer

Dale Hartley Emery

Love Locks

Dæmon Crowe

Love Bots

Angela Penrose

Loving Abby

Brigid Collins

Foiled

Tonya D. Price

A Love to Remember

Kelly Washington

The Refurbished Companion

Stefon Mears

The Secret of Catnip

Alexandra Brandt

Lifeblood

Laura Ware

Who Loves the Unloved?

Joe Cron

Henry and Beth at the Funeral Home

David H. Hendrickson

Truth and Lies

Robert Jeschonek

With Love in Their Hearts

Annie Reed

Every Day New, Bright and Beautiful

About the Editor

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Just What I Needed

I’ve had a very strange 2018. I now live in a condo I hadn’t even seen in January, in a city that I hadn’t planned to move to, in a world I don’t entirely recognize. I’m healthier than I was, but discouraged a lot by the news, which—to steal from Dahlia Lithwick of Slate—has gone from a fire hose of information to a tidal wave. In addition, this has been a hard period in other ways. I literally will not allow myself to count how many of my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances have died in the past year (with more daily, it seems).

So, while my health improved, my heart ached. And the usual respites for me, which include political discussions with friends and being a news junkie, had ceased being fun. I’ve had to learn how to filter, which has been harder than expected.

This past month, as I marked another passing year in my own life and I had to look at the actual number (which is shockingly large), I felt encroaching cynicism. I was having trouble finding a lot to believe in, and found it even harder to hold onto any kind of optimism about my fellow human beings (especially the ones I disagreed with).

That same month, I had to line edit this volume. Usually I find line editing annoying at best. Either I get caught up in the stories and miss things (too often for my comfort), or I get annoyed at rereading when there’s so much new stuff in the world. (Okay, yes. I can be a piece of work.)

This time, though. This time, I found myself looking forward to the work.

Mark Leslie’s idea with this volume was to show all the different kinds of love in the world. When he decided to do this, the news was still a fire hose instead of a tidal wave, and most of us in the United States were still talking to all of our family members. Mark wasn’t thinking about being uplifting. He was thinking about the kinds of stories he wanted to read, and the kind of anthology he wanted to put together.

I’ll be honest: I was worried that it would be too saccharine, with too many unconvincing romances. But I’ve watched Mark do difficult editing tasks before with great aplomb (this volume’s sister volume, Feel The Fear, and especially Editor’s Choice). I did trust him to edit the volume—Dean and I wouldn’t have asked him to continue to edit for us if that wasn’t the case—but I had my concerns.

Oh, my, those concerns are so far gone that I can barely remember them. I had read most of the stories before, most of them at the annual anthology workshop that WMG Publishing puts together in the spring, but reading stories along with a sea of stories for other themes isn’t the same as reading the stories in the order that the editor provided.

When Mark turned in the volume, I remember looking at the table of contents, and thinking I would have put the stories in a different order.

I would have been wrong.

From the first story to the last, this volume explores the ways that love not only makes us human, but makes our lives better. He has found so many different examples of love that they overwhelm the volume. Sometimes I had to reread several times to do my line editing job.

And I didn’t mind one bit.

I found this volume comforting and thoughtful, uplifting and warm. My faith in humanity is restored, and I’m ready to wade into my new existence, fortified by the realization that no matter what else happens, love remains an essential and important part of the human experience.

Thanks, Mark.

—Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Las Vegas, Nevada

July 7, 2018

Introduction

Love Is

Philosophers, poets, writers, and romantics have speculated, composed, bemused, and shared perspectives on love from the beginning of recorded time.

Love is universal. It is something that humans and other animals feel and express in so many different ways, through so many different situations.

Love is complex, it is frightening, it is enlightening, it is comforting. It is confusing, it is simple, it is complex, it is pure.

Love is similar to the theme I was pursuing for Fiction River: Feel the Fear in that it is an emotion that reigns powerfully throughout literature and stories, almost regardless of the genre.

Love is often believed to be about romance. The perspective of romantic love is definitely a strong one in western society. Sure, you expect to read about love in a romance story. But there is also love in so many forms, shapes, sizes, and dimensions.

Love is central. It is at the core of our being. It consumes, it protects, it provides, it divides.

Love motivates.

I remember, during a World Horror Con from many years back, hearing Brian Keene talk about his recent Bram Stoker Award–winning novel, The Rising. He said that it wasn’t a novel about zombies; it was, at its heart, a story about the love that a father has for his son. The book he was speaking about follows a man as he fights his way across a zombie-ravaged America to get to his son. His sole motivation in this tale is his love for his boy.

As a newly minted father at the time, I was touched by Keene’s words. And, though I had avoided reading zombie novels (this was even before The Walking Dead made zombies all kinds of flavors of popular), I picked up this novel.

Not because it was a horror novel about zombies.

But because it was about the love that a parent has for their child.

Love reigns, in all of its forms.

Love is something that we never run out of.

Love is something that, no matter how much we give, there’s always more there. It is a well that can never run dry, even when, at times and for some, it might seem to be a limited resource. But we can manufacture more of it, at any time, at will.

Love is truly one of the things that, no matter how much you give to others, there is always more.

When I put the call out for the stories for Feel the Love, I told the writers I was looking for stories about love from across the spectrum. I knew there would be romantic love stories here, but I wanted to see if the writers could explore different aspects of love, how it is given, is received, is experienced by different people in different situations. And they brought their game to this task. They impressed me far beyond my expectations with the unique ways that they made love central to their story, but explored a unique element of perspective of it.

I admire the way these stories explore love in ways that make me smile and laugh, but also move me and make me cry. They play upon universal fears and explore the darkness; but they also offer hope and encouragement. Ultimately, these stories make me think and reflect.

Without hyperbole, I can assure you that I love these stories.

Love is captured brilliantly by these authors on the following pages.

With Love,

Mark Leslie

May 2018

Thief

Michael Kowal

Thief represents Michael Kowal’s ninth appearance in Fiction River and is part of his popular Dream Again romance series of short stories. He also writes young adult, fantasy, and has written three novels in his John Devlin, PI hardboiled mystery series. In addition to his Fiction River appearances, Michael’s stories have appeared in Pulphouse Fiction Magazine. Find out more about Michael at www.kowalkowal.com.

There is an adeptness to the way that Michael Kowal introduces Sophia in this story as a type of thief, an elusive photographer who prefers to be unseen as she sneaks about snatching images and moments. You can sense, in a brilliantly subtle manner, the way she adores photography, and really puts herself into the moment of what she captures, or, perhaps, steals.

I love photography and the ability it gives you to just cut out the rest of the world and only see what’s in the frame, Michael says when speaking about this story. A great way to focus on just what you think is beautiful. Even if it’s not what others may feel is beautiful.

The lens by which Sophia chooses to see and share the world slowly tightens its focus on a subject she becomes fascinated with. But the story also explores what happens when the tables are turned on her and she is suddenly cast into the spotlight by someone who similarly pours their heart and soul into their own art.

The result is a delightful tale that explores a pure and raw love born from artistic vision and passion.

Sophia was a thief with a camera.

At twenty-five she was slightly overweight, nondescript, bland, had dark hair she kept pulled back and off her face, wore infinitely neutral colors, moved easily, and in the end was completely unseen.

And that was a good thing.

Because being unseen, being quiet, she could also be deadly. At least here on vacation at the Dream Again Hotel. Pinning what she wanted in the middle of her lens, and taking it. Moments, things, bits and pieces of this and that. But it was the details she loved, the smallest of things that most people would only stray past, that she focused on.

It was night as she stood atop the great winding central staircase in the main hall of the hotel. Sophia was on vacation and, for once, was happy.

The air was still around her, that far up. Five stories to be exact. And she was alone. The way she liked it.

In front of her, the great five-story curved glass wall of the hall stood protecting them all from the weather outside. But tonight it was crystal clear, the full moon out and over the Pacific Ocean, the moon gleaming back with white crystals it painted over the top of the calm ocean. But the moon didn’t matter, the amazing view up there didn’t matter, the only thing that mattered to her was Lawrence, sitting below in his favorite chair against the glass wall. Looking out.

The whole of Lawrence was a young man in his early thirties Sophia guessed. He was thin and reedy, her mother would probably say. But Sophia thought that his legs looked like the slow, purposeful, wonderfully long legs of an egret as it made its way through the water. Not so much being careful, as being conscious of disturbing the water. The better to observe what lay beneath.

His face was long like his legs, but angular. Not drooping, but uplifting, like he was always ready to laugh. And smile he did. Sophia didn’t dare to try to catch the smile, though, because if she did try to catch it, that would mean that her lens was facing directly at him and that would just not have been good. You see, any good thief knows that she should never be seen. Half…no, all of the fun, is in the seeing, but never being seen. Until it’s too late and the victim doesn’t even know what’s been taken.

Lawrence, an almost stranger, sat in his chair five stories below. He barely moved, with only a copy of his favorite book, Anna Karenina, on his lap. It was the only book Sophia had seen him with, and he seemed to enjoy it. Sometimes smiling slightly. She called it his Anna Karenina smile. It was soft, and small, and the smile was entirely intimate.

Something she’d like to see every day for the rest of her life. If she was allowed to dream.

He always had either his book with him, or a sketch pad, or both.

Sophia had seen him there at his chair the very first night they had both arrived.

She saw him checking in an hour after she had arrived. Then once he was settled, he had quickly found his chair, and stayed there most every night. She could never approach him, had spent every day the two had been there at the hotel avoiding him but at the same time, stealing bits of him with her camera.

She learned after two days, from following him, that he was a potter, working in the clay room to make cups and plates and bowls and whatever else they did there.

Sophia hated to get her hands dirty so she would never step into the studio. But she looked at him through the small rectangular window in the door. From a distance off. Just glances really. She couldn’t risk being seen.

And even after a full week being in the same hotel she didn’t know much about him, but he had somehow settled into her, in a most unsettling way.

Each time she found him, and photographed him, in bits and pieces, he became whole inside of her. Until he had finally become a real thing. Almost to the point where she couldn’t separate him out. And honestly she didn’t want to. As crazy as this whole thing was.

And it was crazy, this obsession, that wasn’t really an obsession, it was just…there was something about him that she couldn’t explain. Like there was something so natural about being near him. Like taking your next breath. It was that perfect.

And on nights when she let herself go there, she thought maybe even it was love. But then she quickly dismissed it. Because that was impossible.

All she really thought about, though, was the naturalness of it. Of him. And she was sad to lose that.

But the alternative to that was unthinkable.

She couldn’t actually talk with him, walk up to him, so she did the only thing she knew to do—she stole bits and pieces of him, through her camera. And it was why she was up here at the top of the stairs, to capture the last of him. The whole him. As he sat in his favorite chair.

Sophia squatted down to her camera bag at her feet, took off the small telephoto lens and put on a more wide angle lens to capture everything below. So she could remember. All of it. Him.

She got up and rested her arms back on the railing, angled the camera down, and shot.

Sophia found out his name was Lawrence because she overheard it at breakfast one morning. As she sat head down, way behind him, in the corner of the hotel restaurant. The waitress had greeted him and Sophia heard that wonderful name, Lawrence, as she kept her face looking down at her sunny-side upside eggs. She didn’t want him to see her. That would have been ghastly.

Completely ghastly.

She loved that word, Sophia did, because it was so dramatic. Completely unlike anything she was.

Nothing. Blank. That’s pretty much the way her mother described her. And the way Sophia liked to keep it. Hidden. Camouflaged. Tucked against a wall—you couldn’t make her out against a pattern on the wallpaper.

It was an expression her mother used on her, and even though nobody used wallpaper anymore, Sophia didn’t exactly like the expression. But she had taken to it. Because it allowed her to do her thing—which was capture people. Steal things. Moments. Their bits of humanity that most people would find ugly, or horrific, but that Sophia found a beauty in.

The heel of their shoe. The light, almost faint stain of butter dropped to their pant leg that they didn’t even realize was there. The look in a single eye as it was lost in concentration. An eyebrow that lay there like a lounging caterpillar, or a straight-line bit of thin thread. All of it.

A hand on the handle of a car door. A knuckle. A simple, beautiful, tender fold of fabric on a waitress’s light blue blouse.

A lip.

The tip of a nose.

The inside corner of an eye where a tear would come from.

Or a dollar bill left as a tip for a single cup of coffee by a person who probably couldn’t even afford the price of the coffee in the first place. Because they saw humanity in the one who was about to receive it.

These are all that she stole from people. The things of beauty that they left in their wake. And that they didn’t even realize.

Sophia focused the lens down, holding inside of it the entire area below, where Lawrence sat. Alone.

The weekly art exhibit at the hotel was tomorrow night and she had already picked out and submitted three photos to be included in the show. It was the first show she had ever been in, but it was open to all guests of the hotel. Their chance to show the art, and the dreams, that they had been creating for the week.

Everyone got into the show, nobody was refused, so there was zero chance of being denied. Which is why Sophia came here in the first place. For a little breath of freedom.

Sophia took another couple of shots and laughed to herself. She felt like a stalker maybe. But while she did take photos of a lot of the other guests, she always seemed to come back to Lawrence. Like you ended up in your favorite chair.

And it was so stupid, and so crazy but she couldn’t help herself—she would sometimes imagine herself there next to him. Maybe even reading her own copy of Anna Karenina. Maybe just looking at him. Maybe even wanting to be seen.

In her very extravagant imaginings, because her mother would never call them dreams, she and Lawrence would be down walking on the wild Oregon beach below, looking for beautiful rocks, counting the grains of sand, and…holding each other. Sophia imagined she would come up just to the middle part of his shoulders, her head ready there to rest right in the middle of his chest. To hear his heart.

To feel his long arms press against her back and hold her even tighter to him. To feel…safe.

That was the extravagant imagining. But she was just Sophia, standing so far above him that he couldn’t see her. Couldn’t feel her, up here, looking down on him for probably the last time. Just the two of them, there in the Hall of Dreams. She, looking down, but so very far away.

Sophia took one final shot, as Lawrence turned a page, and she walked to the back of the floor, got onto the elevator, and silently whooshed herself back to her room.

Alone.

Sophia was excited, and scared, as she walked into the great hall of the hotel to the very first art show that she was in.

All the seating was cleared away, and it looked like every guest in the hotel was there. Men, women, even children but thankfully there was no sign of Lawrence. That would have scared her even more.

A Spanish guitarist played at the other end of the room, while people walked back and forth looking at all the pieces.

Just to her right on a book stand on a pedestal, was a hand-colored coloring book with a flying piano and a bear, of all things. Next to that on the floor was a broken and bent child’s scooter, painted pink. Some kind of sculpture Sophia guessed, but then again, who knew? And a smile crept onto her face because that was the whole point of all of it—who knew? No one knew. You were only supposed to enjoy it. Everything.

Then Sophia saw her photos.

They were above three narrow white pedestals, but floated in the air. Frameless, they hung from thin wire from above that held them suspended over the pedestals. It was amazing. And there, in that setting, the photos were amazing.

Sophia couldn’t believe it. And she also couldn’t breathe…just looking at her pieces.

Nothing had ever looked so beautiful in her life. And they stood out against the black of the night out beyond the glass walls. The only other thing visible was her own reflection in the glass wall behind, backed by the night of the Pacific Ocean beyond.

The first photo on the left was of a single white shoelace, slightly dirty, and falling to the side of Lawrence’s deep navy blue canvas shoe. The whiteness of the lace stood out against the blue of the shoe, the lace itself dropping as if a woman lounging. The second photo was of his left hand as he walked toward the elevator. She caught it with a telephoto lens and held the hand centered in frame as everything else in the background blurred in movement.

In the third and final photo, was a single stray piece of his hair. Caught one night while he sat in his chair, a halogen light from above rimming it in gold.

It was the most simple thing, the most mundane thing, but there was something intimate about the photo. A shared moment.

Shared by one, unfortunately.

A couple moved up in front of her photos and Sophia moved on herself. Too afraid to hear anything that they may say about it. She didn’t think she could take it. Really knew, she couldn’t take it.

The rest of things passed by in a whirl as Sophia moved from one piece to the next. Always surprised, always amazed, and always feeling as if her three photos fell short against all of them.

Until she found herself at the other side of the great hall and saw…

Herself.

Cast…no…sculpted in clay. From her waist up, two feet tall, in three full dimensions, with a dramatic downlight glowing on it from above, the black of the Pacific Ocean cradling it from behind.

Sophia gasped. Who did it?

She was right there, everything of her. All of it. Out for everyone to see.

On a pedestal.

Sophia turned to leave—and Lawrence stood in her way.

Tall as he was and as thin as he was, right in front of her. And a small smile spread on his long, angular face. The same smile he wore when he read Anna Karenina. Hello.

It was Lawrence’s voice all right, but now heard up close, and directed at her, it cut to the core of her.

She felt like a butterfly…no a moth, pinned.

Do you like it?

Sophia felt for an instant, a deep fearing instant, as if she were the one on the other end of the lens. How had he even seen her, and when had he done it?

He had probably seen her, spying on him. And this was some kind of trick. Some kind of thing to embarrass her. But as she turned back to look at the sculpture it was