Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, Issue #29

PULPHOUSE FICTION MAGAZINE

ISSUE TWENTY-NINE

Edited by

DEAN WESLEY SMITH

CONTENTS

From the Editor’s Desk

All Things Must End

Scott Edelman

My-O-My

O’Neil De Noux

After

Annie Reed

Trigger Bill Learns about the Letter E

Brenda Carre

Untrustworthy

Robert Jeschonek

Hell’s Belles

Dayle A. Dermatis

Nightmare Paint

Mike Zimmerman

Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth

Christina F. York

The Kids Keep Coming

David H. Hendrickson

Killer Advice

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Subscriptions

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

WHAT IS IMPORTANT

One thing about Pulphouse Fiction Magazine that is very important to me as an editor is that readers will just not know what kind of story is next. Not only from story to story, but from month to month.

In one issue I will put a fairly straight-forward mystery story right next to a high fantasy followed by a space opera, all mixed with Twilight Zone like stories and stories that are just flat strange.

And then one month there is slightly more science fiction, another month slightly more mystery.

No genre and a lot of stories that just mix-up genres. That is a hallmark of this magazine.

A second element of this magazine that is critical to me as an editor is that the stories are all high quality. Very high. I have turned away many, many stories from top writers because they just didn’t meet that standard.

Each story has to be a great story that holds the reader from the very start. You may not like the plot of the story, or the content of the story, or it might not be to your taste. But it will be well-written, I can promise that every issue, every story.

And one more thing that I find very important. If a story is a great story that fits, I don’t care if it was published before. So every issue is a mix of original stories (meaning first time published) and original stories that had a previous publication (meaning reprints). However, most readers find all the stories original to them.

This attitude is a 2024 attitude. Good fiction does not spoil. And no reader, no matter how well read, can read it all these days.

Now, since we have gone monthly, I have a featured story each month.

This month the featured story is by a Pulphouse Fiction Magazine regular, O’Neil De Noux. O’Neil was around during the last crazy year of the original Pulphouse business, and over the last 30 years has continued to improve his craft and become maybe the best writer of detective stories working.

I love having a story of his in most issues. His real-world detectives ground the readers amidst all the really crazy stories. The featured story of his this month goes back in time to 1948 New Orleans. Gripping right from the start.

So I hope you enjoy the stories in this issue. I know I sure enjoyed putting this together.

Dean Wesley Smith

Las Vegas, Nevada

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Be cool like Thumper.

SCOTT EDELMAN

Leading off this issue is veteran writer and editor Scott Edelman. Scott was the editor of the science fiction magazine Science Fiction Age. He published and edited the semi-professional magazine Last Wave from 1982 to 1985, which I sent stories to, but could never sell him a story even though I tried a bunch.

Other magazines edited by Edelman over the years include Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix, and Satellite Orbit. He became the editor of SCI FI Magazine (the official print magazine of The Sci Fi Channel) in 2002, and has edited the channel's online magazine Science Fiction Weekly since 2000.

But he did write some for the early years of Pulphouse, (yes, he has been around as long as I have) and now, his fifth story in this new incarnation is a pure Pulphouse story.

 For more information about Scott’s writing and editing, go to www.scottedelman.com

ALL THINGS MUST END

SCOTT EDELMAN

We didn’t know where the strings came from—they simply appeared one day, rising from where they’d suddenly looped around our wrists, necks, and ankles—and wherever we happened to be in that shared moment of their manifestation, when we raised our heads to seek out where they led—of our own volition, we believed, not tugged upward in any way by the sudden yoking—we could see no end to them.

Those five strings—thicker than thread, thinner than rope, smooth as silk, and one indistinguishable from another—shot up vertically from each of us until they at some point seemed to converge and then vanish beyond what was visible by even the sharpest human eye.

We had no idea what waited at their other ends.

We had no idea if there even were other ends.

That ignorance did not sit well with us, any of us, so we looked for what we could not see.

I’ve been speaking of the effects of that strange day as a we thing, as happening to us, and the reason is, I realize, so I won’t have to think too much about me. No surprise there, as thinking that way has always been part of my nature. It long ago became clear to me—that’s what led me to choose my somewhat solitary career and my mostly solitary life.

I wasn’t avoiding myself in that manner during the initial longing for a cause as to what occurred that day, though. My concerns then were no different than all of our concerns. And so it was not submerging myself to say we looked skyward. And when we did⁠—

Binoculars couldn’t find the ends of those strings. Neither could radar. And when the military sent drones aloft to seek the source, they discovered the strings continued way outside our atmosphere and far beyond the limits of their mechanical perception. What segments could be seen of the lower portions of the strings to which we were attached, however, showed they radiated outward, parting slightly and slowly, as if the Earth were the center of the universe. Even our finest telescopes could only reveal that those ever-widening lines extended up and up…and higher still…escaping the solar system and traveling beyond the known planets seemingly forever so their ends could not at all be seen—even though all things must end.

We had no awareness the strings which bound us ever attempted to exert control. None we could perceive, anyway. We each experimented in our own ways to uncover whether that was so, and found we were allowed to move freely, without the loops which could not be loosened pulling us to the left or right, prodding us in one direction or another. We felt no tension to our connections, they were just…there…following. So we did not feel we were captives. We could live our lives on our own terms, without leading the lines along, without being led. Our momentum and inertia remained our own, our free will unsullied.

Regardless of that freedom, some attempted during that beginning to cut themselves away and back to the pre-event form of freedom which had existed throughout human history, applying scissors and fire, chainsaws and acid, and for the most desperate—their own teeth gnawing furiously. But none were successful at releasing that invasive touch. As for me, I never tried to copy their efforts, even though no punishment came for those who did. I’d spent so much of my time alone, their presence was almost welcome. I felt an odd comfort there, one similar to what I felt when considering the fish tanks in the front waiting room—a low key infectious serenity, ever present, and making few demands.

Besides, we could still go about our business. The strings did not prevent those of us who’d become tethered while out and about from returning inside, though many let fear prevent them from even making the attempt, which left them waiting until others tried and survived. Working at a mortuary as I’d been doing for five years before the strings first made their appearance had freed me of many fears, that to my surprise being one of them. Once any of us passed through a doorway, the strings would follow, continuing to hover straight above us, vanishing into whatever ceiling we were beneath, remaining taut as if a fishing line tossed into a pond hanging above our heads. And if another went outside to inspect, they’d find the strings continuing out of the roof and disappearing into the sky as usual, our homes and offices no barrier to the lines which—if the news reports were to be believed—harnessed every human being on Earth.

When it became clear the strings weren’t going away any time soon, and were doing nothing (so far as we could tell) to interfere in our affairs, we did our best to move on, to live the lives we’d led before. Those of us who could, returned to our routines. As for others—some changes were unavoidable.

Our planet, for instance, became smaller. Commercial flights were halted. Not because they were impossible, but because they’d become…uncomfortable. Those who first dared to fly after the phenomenon began were unsettled by what the skies held for them. The skeins which thrust upward were inescapable even tens of thousands of feet in the air, and dodging them over all but the most desolate of areas was an impossibility for even the most skilled pilot. But after the first few times the paths of strings and planes crossed, we learned such acrobatics were not necessary to prevent damaging collisions, for the encounters caused no harm, gave no resistance whosoever. All that manifested, in fact, was a tickling within the pilots and passengers who personally passed through the strings belonging to another. It caused such a disorientation—and created so many rumors the effect might be even more terrifyingly existential—that the customer base evaporated and flights were soon grounded.

Car travel was up, though, making my life busier as a consequence, which I should have guessed would happen, considering my familiarity with the actuarial tables. That left me with little time to obsess about the new world in which we lived, a dual benefit—what was good for business was also good for my peace of mind.

Every once in a while, someone would attempt to climb their strings—which regardless of what those flying discovered up above, kept their solidity in such circumstances down below—to see whether they could learn from where they’d been cast. They believed the previous inability of seekers to find an answer via radar, telescope, and the like, was because anything but the most natural of means was inevitably doomed to fail to reach whatever was on the other end of the strings. I could have told them what they were doing was pointless, that whatever answer waited out there really didn’t matter and would affect no change in their lives, but I didn’t even try. That would have been pointless, too.

They’d bring food and water with them, blankets for the cold they expected would come if they successfully rose, and hammocks which would enable them to pause along the way and sleep at the end of each day. Those of us too wise to fall for such foolishness would sometimes gather below to look on each time a person mounted such a pilgrimage, which resulted in so many of our strings condensing so tightly they’d block the sun, forcing the watchers to live in shadow until we grew bored and abandoned providing an audience for the impossible. Those few who chose to remain would watch the climbers rise until they vanished out of sight, never to be seen again, which unfortunately encouraged others, who wondered if their disappearances meant they found what they’d sought.

I was never one of them.

Never one of those who felt they should follow, that is. I was content with the new world. I did join the world in wondering, however. Just not about the same thing everyone else seemed to.

Here’s the question I would often ask myself and have never been able to answer⁠—

Were the strings truly newcomers to our existence, suddenly substantiating with no warning, giving no clue as to the event approaching, with a not there/there disconnect? Or had they always been with us, only we simply had never been able to see them before?

We all had different questions, it seems, and attempted to answer them in different ways.

Some were driven in their desperation to find the answers to their own questions by climbing the strings of others, to varying results. They would knock down strangers, then leap for their strings, feeling the less familiar tethering would give them a better chance of ascending than those who climbed their own. These unfortunate assaults seemed to happen most frequently to those who were pregnant, from whom a second set of strings rose, the theory being, I suppose, that any climb would have greater support upon ten strings than five. But whether the invaders would hurl themselves at one set of strings or two, most faced failure, for they’d pass through as if the lines weren’t there at all, and hit the ground on the other side, where they’d lie dazed, sometimes unable to rise again for days, and not because of any injury, but rather…they seemed to lack the will. A few managed to maintain contact and move upward—and we never understood why those few were able when most could not. This connection to the strings of a stranger had little seeming effect on the one below, who would eventually get up from the attack and move about their day. As with all climbers, we never did find out what happened to those who rose.

Those were not the only methods the malcontents sought to break away from the world they’d been handed. There were some who leapt from tall buildings, hoping their strings would stretch like a rubber band, storing the energy needed to snap them back past where they’d begun and off into the heavens. Neither of those things ever occurred—a number of the deceased were brought to me to deal with after—so it didn’t happen as often as you might suppose. Others would go deep sea diving, believing that if they descended deep enough their strings would snap. What they thought would happen next if they were to have been released, I never learned, but as it never happened, the results being more tragic than triumphant, it didn’t really matter.

So most of us continued on, neither seeking answers nor seeking to be set free by them, living our lives and trying to forget the strings were even there. And after awhile, it was almost as if they weren’t. On the right days, in the right moods, they were almost invisible, like those floaters in the corners of one’s eye which can for the most part be forgotten except on the brightest of sunny days.

I was lucky enough to be one of those. Though perhaps it had little to do with luck, but rather the inescapable influence of my circumstances.

As I went about my work, preparing my unfortunate customers for the next world, two things happened—I saw firsthand the results of those who’d struggle to escape their fates—and by bearing witness I surrendered to whatever my own was meant to be. My job at the funeral home had me privy in a way most others were not to what came after, so I knew—not even death could cut the strings. As the bodies were laid out, the lines which bound them still rose to whatever in the sky kept them tethered. Cremation did not sever the ties, either, for I could see the strings rising from those who chose that path, so close together as to be indistinguishable, connecting the urn to the heavens. Walking the cemetery grounds every day and seeing strings leaving the grass to pierce the clouds changes a person, in a way