Image from Georges Gaste's painting Tête d'Egyptienne, Zhorah, 1903

Archives: Stories


  • Ahavah’s Golem

    Ahavah’s Golem

    “If Rava created a man, why shouldn’t I create a woman?”

    To tell her that what the great rabbi created, a greater one dissolved, will not satisfy this child. For she is not driven by pride, or avarice, but by a broken heart.

    She is only twelve, and she has lost much more than father and mother and home; she has lost her trust in the faith that they taught her. Her name is Ahavah, and I know the anger that burns within her.

    “Should life be created to bring death?” I finally reply to her question.

    She is thrice surprised: That I found her hiding place in a long-abandoned house, that I understood the words she spoke and the symbols she arranged upon the ground, and that I know why she means to raise a Golem.

    This story first appeared in ResAliens Zine Issue #11

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  • A blind fish story

    A blind fish story

    Millimeter for millimeter, the cosmic ray neutron shielding power of iron outperforms lead by a factor of five. And Carl Newman’s Remote Sensing suite had found the mother of all mother lodes in the largest asteroid belt ever seen by man; free for the taking. And, as if that were not enough, low orbit magneto-metric mapping of the system’s only habitable planet suggested it too contained vast underground deposits of the metal.

    (This story first appeared in the anthology Alien Dimensions; Space Fiction Short Story Anthology Series #23; Edited by Neil A. Hogan, 2022)

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  • Feythful

    Feythful

    They had everything they needed in their modest farm except an heir to care for them in their old age. Yet Parson Acke Rahm and his wife Carita, the village midwife, lived contented lives. Though fate had denied them the very joy she had brought to their kith and kin in their village, and beyond, they had no regrets. Then one evening there was a knocking at their door.

    (This story first appeared in Antipodean SF issue 292, 21 January, 2023)

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  • ACC was right

    ACC was right

    Nothing can be in two places at the same time or in two times at the same place. The first seems obvious to us. The second is guaranteed by the expansion of the universe and the fact that every planet, every star, every galaxy in the universe is constantly moving. Here won’t be here tomorrow.

    (This story first appeared in Antipodean SF issue 283, 21 Apr. 2022)

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  • I am Sorrow

    I am Sorrow

    One more year — I told Devon that’s all we needed. I was so sure that working together we would find the key to prolong the reaction. But Devon doubted. His allowance consumed and the debts mounting, his pride could not abide the shame of failure. Even though I told him it did not matter to me, that I had already found two families that would have hired me as governess, that I knew we could succeed together, he would not have it. So we went to America to see this John Keely. It was December of 1887; the man was at the height of his fame.

    (This story first appeared in Antipodean SF issue 280; January 2022)

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  • Worse Monsters

    Worse Monsters

    The loose wrappings at my wrist and neck flutter like flags of war in the wind. Hand over hand I turn and face the rocky wall of the precipice. I have to pull up; but my sinews do not remember how. I look down again and wonder if that too will be my end.

    (This story first appeared in Antipodean SF, November 2021)

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