Author Archives: Kevin Singer

Anatomy of a Story, or How I Came to Create the Tale of Poor Nori

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Self-promotion time: one of my stories has been picked up for inclusion in the now-available anthology Summer of Speculation: Sidekicks.

My story is called Champions of the Nereid, and it’s a story about a rudderless woman named Nori who falls under the spell of Hyacinth, a charismatic woman whose mission it is to cleanse the rivers. Nori assumes Hyacinth’s intentions are noble. I won’t spoil it, but it’s a horror story, so you can guess there’ll be trouble brewing for Nori.

This story came to me in a viral video that circulated a few years ago. By now everyone knows about those well meaning yet supremely annoying anti-oil protesters who block traffic and only end up alienating people from their cause. When I watched this video I sided with the angry doctor, and a kind of battle rush hit me.

But later I began to think about the screaming girl. And I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I had this curiosity as to how she got there, how she felt during the incident, and what happened to her after the incident. How did it change her? Instead of mocking her, as I initially did, I came to this place of sympathy. Not with her actions, but with her reaction. I felt something for her. So I decided to write about someone in a similar situation.

That’s how Nori, one of the champions of the nereid, was born (nereids are mythological mermaids, by the way. Hint hint).

From there I knew it would be a horror story.

While Nori’s story was fun to explore, it was tough to write. It’s a slow burn, and those types of stories are hard in terms of maintaining tension and momentum. I did several rewrites and workshopped it. A lot of the backstory had to be cut because it cluttered up the piece (too distracting). To be honest, I’m still not 100% sure I nailed it. But I must have done something right, because now it has a life out there in the world.

As for Nori…

Trope or Choke: Episode 6

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The challenge: write a complete story in 500 words or less following these guidelines:

Setting: A deep freezer

Genre: Horror + ’90s redux

Trope: Wai-Fu (tiny girl who kicks ass)

Characters: Cleopatra + absent-minded professor

POV/tense: 3rd person/present tense

The result:

Mister Pointy Returns

It reads: Do not open.

Professer Wentworth purses her lips.

“What’s that awful odor, Stuart?”

Her assistant sighs. “You left yesterday’s salmon dinner on your desk.”

“It must’ve tasted atrocious,” she says. “Now, about this “do not open” situation. A deep freezer arrives from the estate of a murdered FBI agent. Dana Scully, right? With no other instructions. What do you suppose we should do?”

“Not open it.”

“You pathetic man. Where’s your curiosity?”

“I don’t want to end up being the cat.”

“Well it’s my laboratory,” she huffs. “I say open it.”

He sighs. “Fine. I’ll remove the padlock.”

He cuts the lock off and motions to the door. “Would you like to do the honors?”

She scoffs. “Grunt work? That’s why I have you.”

He tugs the handle. It refuses to give.

She snorts. “What a waste of testosterone.”

He gives it an angry yank. The door releases. Cold mist fills the room. Wentworth holds her nose. “It reeks worse than that blasted salmon.”

“It said do not open.”

She shoves Stuart aside. “Let the professional have a look.” She wipes frost from her bifocals and peers into the mist. “It appears to be two sarcophagi. There are name plates. Hard to read. This one reads B Summers. The other. C something. No other artifacts.”

An alarm sounds on her phone. Wentworth perks up. “I forgot. Tonight is Mister Fuzzykins birthday. We’ll pick this up in the morning.”

On the way out she trips on the freezer’s power cord, curses her clumsy shoe and dashes out the door.

The next morning Stuart notices the cord free of the outlet. As he plugs it in, Wentworth catches him on his knees.

“What now, boy?”

“It thawed out.”

“Providence indeed.” She orders Stuart to pry free the first sarcophagus. Inside is a woman, olive skin, long black hair. He opens the second. Another woman. Petite. Young.

“So this Scully collected women,” Wentworth says. “Odd.”

Stuart leans toward the first woman. “I think she moved.”

“Preposterous.” Wentworth shoves him away. The woman opens her eyes and parts her lips to reveal fangs, which rip the skin of Wentworth’s neck and lock onto an artery. Wentworth screams. Her blood splatters. The woman drains Wentworth and tosses her dead husk aside. “A bitter offering for Egypt’s Queen.” She eyes Stuart. “I trust you will taste better.”

Before he can move the second body sits up. “Bad girl, Cleopatra. Rude much? You’re barely awake and already killing people.”

Cleopatra turns. “The foul slayer.”

“I prefer Buffy. Hey cuddlemonkey,” she tells Stuart. “Throw me that broom-handle.” She catches and breaks it. “Hey, Cleo. Mister Pointy needs some love.”

Buffy roundhouses Cleopatra, pins her down and hovers the broomstick above Cleopatra’s heart. “This is for murdering my friends. And for baiting me to that lame FBI agent. And for getting me iced as a threat to the government.” She smirks. “Nah, I just like killing vamps.” She plunges Mister Pointy into Cleopatra, who turns to dust.

Image: (C) Ash Carli

Trope or Choke: Episode 5

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The challenge: write a complete story in 500 words or less following these guidelines:

Setting: On the bus

Genre: Dark academia + Speculative

Situation: “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Characters: Elon Musk + a hotshot

POV/tense: 1st person/future tense

The result:

Heart Like a Fortress

One day my heart will surrender its walls. It will break its shell and pierce the world around me. I know this. Until that day I will persevere. I will swallow down my screams and funnel my pain like bullets in my bloodstream and inside those barricades.

Until then I will ride the shuttlebus in my seat assigned not by the proctors of Blessed Musk Institute 67 in the Fourth Sluice of Olympus Mons, but by Damron, he of the titanium fist, he of the night vision eyes, he of the pack that gloats over their fifteen-generation lineage on Mars, their high-grade cybernetics, and their vulgar power.

“You failed advanced chelation,” he whispers in my ear. “Not me,” he purrs. “I aced it.”

That old tingle of shame pricks my limbs and flushes my face. I curse my weakness. “I never wanted to be here,” I whisper.

“Ha!” Damron barks to his pack. They yelp laughter as if on command. “Hear that? The Earthling doesn’t want to be here. Thinks he’s too good for us Redders.”

“I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” I say flatly. Two dead parents on Earth plus one living uncle on Mars equals a one-way trip to another planet, another institute, another mode of being.

“You don’t belong here,” Damron hisses. “Mars will crush you.” He wraps metal fingers around my earlobe. “We will crush you.”

He squeezes. I swallow the pain. I will rise from my seat and tell him: No, you can never crush me! Mars will never crush me! All the proctors and students at the Blessed Musk Institute with their leers and scorn will never crush me!

I tell him none of that. Instead I flinch and I let escape a treasonous “ouch.”

“Heeeah! What a pathetic meatboy you are.” Damron gloats in his victory. He slaps me on the side of the head.

“Don’t!”

I shield myself but it does no good. He batters my skull until I see more stars than the darkest night in the Hellas Planitia.

A girl in the back squeals laughter. “You made meatboy cry again.” My eyes burn. I wish I was invisible. Bullets of shame course through my bloodstream. They coagulate inside the shell of my heart with all the rest trapped there—my hurt and pain, my hopes and dreams, all encapsulated away from me, from the world, for my safety, for theirs, but all the while I am dead inside, without a heart to call my own.

“You’re so pathetic,” Damron whispers. “I bet that’s why your parents killed themselves.”

That’s it. That’s the one last bit of shrapnel to load into the fortress of my heart. My eyes bolt open. “I never failed advanced chelation,” I say. “I am not just a meatsack.”

One day that fortress heart of mine will explode, a bomb of metal mingled with blood, and I will send fragments of my pain into the hearts of all around me. That day is now.

Image: © iStock/nemchinowa

Read This Book: Children of Time

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620 pages. That’s how long this brick of a book turned out to be when I got it in the mail. Hell no, I thought. But then I started to read it and I didn’t want to stop.

Children of Time, the 2015 sci-fi novel by British writer Adrian Tschaikovsky, is a supremely imaginative story about one planet and two rival species vying for control of it. On the one side we have an ark ship of humans, the survivors of a spacefaring civilization that blew themselves up millennia earlier, leaving a rump population on Earth to reestablish technology and, one day, flee their dying home for the stars.

To where exactly?

Well, here’s where Tschaikovsky takes the trope of a colony ship in a wholly unexpected direction.

Let’s rewind. Millennia earlier at the start of that cataclysmic war, megalomaniacal scientist Avrana Kern was going to seed a terraformed planet with monkeys and a virus that would selectively enhance their evolution in favor of intelligence. Her creepy plan goes awry, and what we get is not a rehashed Planet of the Apes, but something much creepier, especially for those of us who are arachnophobes.

Spoiler…the monkeys didn’t make it to the planet, and the virus, which did, selected for intelligence mostly among the insects, the top dogs being a certain species of spider.

Centuries later, as the spiders evolve into a complex and intelligent society, that ragtag ship nears what they believe to be a green paradise just waiting for them to land and populate it. As you can guess, there will be conflict.

I won’t spoil the rest of the story. Instead, here’s my breakdown:

The good:

—Children of Time alternates between both groups. For the first hundred pages or so, the story and pace were riveting. I didn’t want to put it down.

–The writing is pristine and engaging. As someone who obsesses over words, zero complaints.

–Tschaikovsky managed to make spiders (not a fan) into sympathetic and relatable characters. He wove spiders’ natural biology into humanlike functions and hierarchies. He made it seem effortless, though I am sure this was the product of hours upon hours of research and craft.

–The human characters were all compelling. Even the minor ones seemed real to me.

The not as good:

—Children of Time sagged in the middle. There was a lot of back and forth that made me wonder if the writer had to figure out a way to account for the passage of time (and the spiders’ continued evolution). Also in the middle section, the chapters were overly long, when shorter and punchier would have been more effective.

–A subplot regarding the ship’s captain, while interesting, felt like it belonged in another book.

–While I liked the ending (totally unexpected), something about it felt off. Not sure what or why. It could have just been a pacing issue.

But these are minor flaws. I wouldn’t normally buy or recommend a 600-page book. Children of Time is a fantastic exception.

Trope or Choke: Episode 4

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The challenge: write a complete story in 500 words or less following these guidelines:

Setting: In a sleazy casino

Genres: Noir + Paranormal romance

Trope: First alien contact

Characters: A space wizard + King Arthur

POV/tense: 2nd person/future tense

The result:

Merlin’s Delight

You’ll incarnate savagely, a murderous pain as your spirit merges with another discarded body.

You’ll taste burnt almonds. This body was poisoned. Targeted. Your latest incarnation may be brief. Briefer still if that infernal wizard finds you.

You’ll rise like Lazarus and think of her in a tumble of ancient melancholy. You’ve chased Guinivere for eons, your vengeful love tangled by the wizard’s curse. You’ll rub the death from your eyes and sense her near. You’ll assess your face. Not a king’s but it will do. Then you’ll peer into a sky of drifting stars. On a spacefaring craft yet again.

A knock pounds your door. You’ll open it to a lipstick blonde who eyes you suspiciously. “Octavio, hon, you’re looking fresh as a daisy.”

She’s not Guinivere. “I don’t wilt,” you’ll say.

“Apparently not.” She’ll hook your arm. “Come. Brando’s on roulette. You know what that means.”

She clacks her heels down the corridor, nodding at women who stream flirty laughter and men who shrink away.

“You’re armed?” she’ll ask.

Oh, Excalibur, gone so long. “No.”

She’ll bring you to a doorway framed by neon. Merlin’s Delight, it reads. The gall of him.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she’ll say.

“Soon enough, perhaps.”

You’ll pass a surly doorman and enter a room of gaming tables and preening bodies. In the midst of the clamor you’ll feel her essence throbbing in your chest. The blonde will plant a Judas kiss against your cheek. “You shouldn’t have done it.” Before you can ponder her meaning a man ratchets your arm behind your back.

“Brando, I assume,” you’ll say.

“Hard one to kill,” he’ll growl. “Care for a trip to the airlock?”

You’ll smirk. “Flirt.”

“Very funny. Now let’s go.”

This peasant won’t stop you. After a kick to his shin and a fist to his nose, a posse will subdue you both.

“Gentlemen, violence is forbidden in my establishment.”

“Apologies, Mister Wells,” Brando will say.

You’ll stare into familiar black eyes. “When will this game end, Merlin?”

“It’s only half begun.”

Your pounding heart becomes unbearable. “Where is she?”

“Impatience was always your Achilles, Arthur.”

“Mister Wells,” the blonde will say, “this has nothing to do with your operation.”

“He is my operation, child.”

“Don’t cross us,” she’ll say.

“Don’t you challenge me, girl. Your science pales next to my powers.”

The pull of Guinivere will become a fishhook in your flesh. You’ll scan the crowd. That sultry redhead? No. That ebony cocktail waitress? No. The lanky man slouched against the bar? No. Then you’ll spy a fluid form, skin like rusty sunset. A six-fingered hand sweeps tendrilled hair. You’ll gasp. You’ve never seen an alien. Its head turns your way. You lock onto silver eyes. It’s Guinivere! The only woman who ever mattered. You’ll ache for one more night with her, one just like that first in Salisbury among the bonfires.

As your fingertips graze her skin you’ll hear a pop. Pain will sear your chest. Then, blackness.

[Photo by Giancarlo Corti on Unsplash]

Trope or Choke: Episode 3

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The challenge: write a complete story in 500 words or less sticking to these guidelines…

Genre: Comedy + Historical

Setting: On Gilligan’s Island

Trope: Possessed by demons

Characters: A star ballerina + a wise old person

POV/tense: 2nd person/past tense

The result:

The Minnow Would Be Lost

The way you settled the Exorcist experiment. A miracle. Was the child selected to play Regan truly possessed? A lesser case worker would have silenced her. Not you. You held her and prayed until she believed the demons fled.

Recreating Mass Formation Psychosis is messy. But how else can we understand the madness of eras like 1780s France, 1930s Germany, 2020s America?

I almost nixed your application. You seemed fragile, but your stint with the Bolshoi turned you to steel, strong enough to master our worst experiment: Gilligan’s Island.

Three months earlier we’d selected the participants for the roles of the castaways, to remain in character until the experiment ended. Our last observer team never returned. You volunteered to accompany me. Together we rowed out to the island. I would be a theater director. You, an actress with our traveling production of Taming of the Shrew.

You wanted to learn everything I knew. You told me someday, you would have my job.

I asked if you knew why we imposed such stress on these brave souls.

To prevent the worst of mankind, you said.

Do you think we really can, though I asked.

No. Still, we have to try.

On the shore we discovered a sign saying NO ENTRY beside a skull with flecks of crusted, bloody flesh around the sockets.

Worst case, you whispered, no fear in your eyes.

The show must go on I said.

We hiked through the foliage to the encampment. The breeze carried a sweet burning. Black smoke billowed from a fire. I heard a scraping. Past the first hut a body hunched. I recognized him: the lonely widower I selected to play Thurston Howell.

I cleared my throat, and said: Good Afternoon. I am Lachlan Mountjoy, director of the Globe Theater, and this is Serena Butterfield, the finest thespian in the world.

Ginger ran out. A director? She screamed. Her tattered sequin dress was streaked maroon. Her red hair a birds nest. I recall how excited the woman portraying her had been to be chosen. Now her eyes terrified me.

Yes, I said, and we would like you to play the lead. My voice cracked, because I knew this experiment had likely failed. Are there others here?

A man stumbled out of a hut. Red shirt. Head bowed. Hands behind his back. Muttering The Minnow Would Be Lost over and over.

Shut the fuck up! Ginger screamed.

Gilligan ran up to you and grinned. The Minnow Would Be Lost, he hissed. You never flinched.

Are there no others? I asked.

They were so tasty, Thurston said. Dead weight becomes good meat. Are you dead weight, too?

Gilligan pulled a machete from behind his back. You silenced him forever with your glock. Before Thurston could pounce you silenced him, too. You saved the tranquilizer gun for Ginger. She would be analyzed, her brain dissected.

My spirit broke with that experiment. That’s why I recommended you for my role. Your unsentimental nature will take you far.

[Photo by Peter Fogden on Unsplash]

Trope or Choke: Episode 2

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The challenge: write a complete story in 500 words or less sticking to these guidelines…

Setting: An asteroid

Genre: Fantasy + Fable

Trope: A nasty surprise

2 Characters: A dumb jock and Dracula

POV/tense: 3rd person/future tense

The result:

The Lady in the Rock

Not the frog, nor the witch, nor the ball catcher can know who will emerge victorious. That’s for the best. One’s fate should remain a mystery.

It will begin with Taylor.

“Don’t be a wuss,” Taylor will say as she peels off her dress.

“But the water’s so dark,” Jayden will answer. “What if there’s an alligator in it?”

“You’re so dumb. There are no alligators in Arizona. You promised you’d take me skinny dipping.”

“And you promised if I do…”

She’ll suck her finger. “Deal.”

He’ll pull off his clothes and they’ll dive beneath the black water, surfacing not under moonlight but in a cave.

Taylor will graze her lips along his neck. “What’s happening, Jayden? I’m so scared. Hold me.”

“Whoa, babe. Look at the moon. It’s not above us. It’s in front, like on some giant tv screen.”

While the two humans rise from the water in their alien environment, a green amphibian will emerge beside them, clearing its slimy throat before croaking its truth. “I may appear a lowly frog, ignored as I flop through the muck, but l possess the power of speech. Hear my words. Hear me roar. Listen to me! What I have to say is of the utmost value.”

A bellow rising from the depths of the chamber will cut him off. “Silence! I am Morgan Le Fay. Tremble at my name. My nemesis King Arthur banished me to this asteroid, but not before I stole his sword, the only weapon that could slay me.” She’ll point to a stone with a sword embedded in it.

“Wicked,” Jayden will say.

“Foolish witch,” the frog will croak. “Pride will be your downfall.”

The witch will approach the frog. “Are you are the magic holder? The one who followed my call through the lake?” She’ll lick his skin and grimace. “Perhaps not.” She’ll drop him and spike her heel through the heart of the only talking frog in Arizona, and that will end the tale of the frog who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

She’ll turn to Jayden. “And you, my fine muscled one?”

“I’m just a tight end at Arizona state.”

The trapped witch will frown. “Hmm.” Then she’ll pause on the beautiful young Taylor. “You smell…old.”

“Me? No! I’m nubile and nineteen.”

The witch will wrap her hands around a shrieking Taylor’s throat, who will transform into a withered pustule-covered vampire. “Dracula!” The witch will laugh. “I sensed your power. Now I’ll claim it for my own.”

The vampire will lunge for Jayden. “No! He was mine to drink! You’ve ruined it.”

The witch will siphon Dracula’s power, leaving him a shriveled hulk before rising up with a victorious wail. “I can feel his strength inside me. Now I’ll return and conquer the world.”

But Jayden, who outlasted the talking frog and prince of darkness, will free the sword from the stone, and as he beheads the witch with one swift swing, he’ll prove that sometimes brawn is mightier than brains.

[Photo by Rhett Wesley on Unsplash]

Trope or Choke: Episode 1

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The challenge: write a complete story in 500 words or less following these guidelines…

Setting: On a train

Genre: Sci-fi + Military

Trope: Blown cover

Two characters: A dumb blonde and a mad scientist

POV/tense: 1st person/past tense

The result:

The Screams of the Acolytes

The bards would sing of Asmodeus, the golden capital of the Bartolic Republic, but their songs turned to cries when the republic turned to empire. Brandon Sathanis, that cyborg chimera, that corruption, secured his infamy as our last elected leader. Then he gutted the vital freedoms one by one until none remained but the freedom to agree.

I’d been exiled from Asmodeus for twelve years. This troop transport train to Asmodeus’s central station, would end that chapter. The odds were high, the wager my life, but success could bring counterrevolution. But the enemy was cleverer than I expected.

This captain, this man with silver bars and green uniform and black boots, no cyborg enhancements visible, eyed me with simmering contempt. “You’re no lieutenant.”

“Not for Sathanis.” I spat in his face. Spittle flecked his left cheekbone. He didn’t wipe it away.

“Eyes not truly blue,” he said. “Hair not truly blond. Fraud.” He clucked his tongue. “But what else to expect from a recidivist. Vermin, really. We’ve already disposed of five this week.”

I bucked. The cuffs that locked my wrists above my head dug into my skin. “Disposed of?”

The captain motioned to the gray-haired woman hunched in the corner, the left half of her face a dull cyborg chrome that melted into her human flesh. “You’re choices are thusly, lieutenant. Defect. Repent of your recidivist tendencies and embrace the truth of the majority.”

“Or?” I asked.

“Or Doctor Gressil will commence your unraveling.”

The doctor’s cyborg eye flashed orange. A rumble emanated from her throat. “The process is most unpleasant,” she said. “Truly unpleasant. For the participant. For the spectators, so much fun.”

The train jostled through the spiraling suburbs of Asmodeus. Soon it would pierce the heart of the city. “Here is my answer. Brandon Sathanas is the king of lies.”

The captain clapped. “I was hoping this would be your choice.” He turned to the doctor. She tiptoed toward me and pulled a silver vial from her pocket. “Your plot will tumble from your mouth as your gray matter dissolves,” she said. She twisted my head and rammed the needle into my ear. I howled. I panted. I felt nothing except a throbbing in my ear.

Then, happiness. I couldn’t say the colors of the train car. Even my own name became a puzzle. Drool hung from my mouth. I grinned at the nice man and woman before me.

“Good, good, my boy,” the captain said. “Tell us what you’ve plotted.”

I laughed.

“Tell us,” he said.

“You go boom,” I muttered.

“What?”

“You go boom.”

He grabbed his phone just as the pulse rippled through the car. He clutched his chest—his enhancement beneath the skin. The doctor shrieked as her cyborg face sizzled. The train swayed as if drunk, then rolled onto its side. My chained body twisted among the collapsing metal and shattering glass, mind still dumb but alive.

Outside the train I heard the screams of Brandon Sathanis’s acolytes. And I laughed.

[Photo by Tom Dahm on Unsplash]