Winning Flash - "Last Call" by Dan Pietrasik

We have a winner! I launched another flash fiction contest a month ago and what follows is our winning story. The entries had to be under 1,000 words, have a speculative fiction element and involve one or more mirror balls. I kicked it off with a story of my own, "Mirror Images". Our winning author, Dan Pietrisk not only is published here on Science Fiction and Other ODDysseys, he also has a mirror ball, complete with a motor to turn it on its way to him. Lucky him, huh?

"Last Call"
by Dan Pietrasik

Based on how many people are already here, I'll be eating well tonight. The sun is barely down and there's already a nice selection on the dance floor and milling around the tables. A guy like me will have no problems.
   
“Here you go, buddy,” the bartender says, handing me a Long Island Iced Tea.
   
I include a non-memorable tip when I pay him, and move on to a table. The big mirror behind the bartender bothers me. Not that I worry about a mortal noticing I don't have a reflection. They usually come up with some lame excuse on their own about line of sight or something. If they don't, it only takes a little mental push to give them the idea. The part where a mirror absorbs a piece of me instead of reflecting it back is what creeps me out. The table is also a better hunting position.
   
I sit and watch the herd for a while, wondering why another vampire hasn't claimed this place. Not just quantity, but quality of feeding here. A waitress catches my eye as she leans on the bar chatting with the bartender, but I know better than to choose from the staff -- at least if I want to come back. And I think I'd be a fool to not frequent these grounds. With a quick glance around I can see two women I'm definitely putting on the menu, and at least a dozen that wouldn't require lowering my standards.
   
“Ready for a refill?”
   
I look up over my left shoulder as the waitress I noticed earlier pulls her hand back from mine. Apparently I didn't hear her the first time. It's nice to be able to control my hearing enough to come into clubs and not be overwhelmed, but not hearing someone approach because of it takes some getting used to. I order another drink, the better to blend in. She's checking me out more than I'd like for someone on my Don't Drink Here list, so I send a little extra “ignore me” vibe her way. If she forgets to bring my drink, so be it.
   
I pick out my first appetizer. A young woman obviously drowning her sorrows in a girls' night out, and far enough into it that her friends won't notice the effects on her if I take a little off the top. I'm sure she'll appreciate the attention, even if she doesn't remember me afterward. And just a couple of unexplained wounds to differ tomorrows aches and pains from any other hangover. I'm about to make my move when the waitress comes back with my drink and sits across from me at the table.
   
“I just wanted you to know,” she says with a smile, “I can take a break now and dance, before we're too busy.”
   
I really need to work on turning down the attraction level, this is not the right kind of attention.  Sticking with drunk patrons for my meals is so much less complicated, and if I get carried away, much less inconvenient. But turning down an attractive offer to dance is not the way to avert attention. There's definitely worse sacrifices I've had to make than a little exertion with a hot woman. I've always been a sucker for the assertive but shy thing she has going on, coming up to me like this, but keeping her eyes slightly downcast while waiting for my answer. I'm hooked when she reaches up to scratch an itch on the side of her neck. Besides, she'll go back to work after one dance, and write me off as a player when she sees how many others I plan to go through tonight.
   
“Then let's dance,” I say, standing and offering her my hand.
   
She laughs at my gesture, and with a quick tug on my sleeve heads to the dance floor. At the edge, she turns to make sure I'm following and starts to dance. I glide smoothly into my carefully restrained, “let the woman I'm with appreciate me, but don't draw stares” moves.    She's using her whole  body, spinning and swaying, drawing me after her toward the center of the floor, but still not meeting my eyes. I sense the blood rushing through her veins, feel its pull. I'm getting worked up. All my urges are focused on her.
   
My hunger is growing as she dances. I need to break away before I succumb, but I can't. Why can't I look away? Why aren't I closing in? I've stopped dancing. I'm just staring at her. She finally looks me in the eye, but I can't catch her. Her smile has changed. Leaning forward, she whispers in my ear.
   
“Last call.”
   
She dances back again, raising her arms over her head. My eyes follow her hands as they go up. She's pointing toward the ceiling. I look up further, and see that we're dancing directly below a triangle of disco balls.
   
Hundreds of little mirrors. Flashing. Rotating. Pulling me apart. 


***

Dan Pietrasik is a reader and writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, two kids and three cats. A programmer by profession, he also dabbles in improvisational comedy.

Untold Chronicles could be told better

The Untold Chronicles, Book One
Everdance: A Blood Story
Geo Brawn IV (writer/illustrator)
Brawn Graphix Design Creation, February 2011

Reviewed by Lyda Morehouse

If you’re intrigued by morally-ambiguous vigilante characters like Showtime’s serial killer antihero “Dexter,” The Untold Chronicles is a graphic novel for you. On the surface, Kate Bennet appears to be a mild-mannered kid lit author, but, in reality, she’s a blood-thirsty vampire in desperate need of a mentor. Her vampire husband died leaving Kate unable to fend for herself. Luckily, she meets the queen of demons and mother of all vampires, Lilith, who relishes taking Kate under her wing, as it were.

In the course of the graphic novel, the reader is also treated to the history of Lilith. As she tells her story for Kate to write as a new book, we see how Lilith went from being the first wife of Adam to Lucifer’s lover. Having written extensively myself about Lilith and Satan, I found those sections particularly interesting.

The only thing that mars this collection is the artwork. It’s very uneven. Individual panels can be quite well-rendered only to be followed by very sketchy or blurry ones. Unfortunately, that’s true for the lettering as well, which makes the book, literally, difficult to read.

The Untold Chronicles is a monster’s coming of age story. It’s about learning to embrace the dark and make it work for you. A very cool idea that needed better execution, alas.

EE Knight - serving up vampires

EE Knight has your basic rags to ... well, pro writer ... story. And now he's definitely on a roll with his meal ticket, the Vampire Earth series. Here's what the Vampire Earth website has to say of the series:

Our World is Under New Management.

A legendary terror has reentered Earth, establishing a New Order built on harvesting human souls. They smashed our society, altered our climate, and enslaved much of the population that survived their apocalyptic takeover.

Vampire Earth is a series of novels by E.E. Knight. They follow the life of David Valentine, from his youth as a young soldier fighting against the evil which has stolen humanity's future. Valentine grows to manhood defending the embattled freeholds, the remaining islands of sanity from the madness of the grotesque Kurian Order.

When he's not writing, EE Knight is gaming, reading, traveling, listening to good tunes or watching movies. He also digs speaking at conventions and libraries and teaching here and there. Now, let's get to know him a bit better...

AW: The market is flooded with vampires, zombies and werewolves. What makes your vampires special? What is your vampire canon?

EEK: If by canon you mean books that I drew on for my mythos, some of my favorite books include the Lumley Necroscope series, [John] Steakley's Vampires, and works by Richard Matheson and Stephen King.

With my vampire canon, I took the traditional powers of the creature and divided them into physical and mental. All the mental powers went to my ancient, virtually-immortal (thanks to their vampiric lifestyle) aliens - the Kurians. The Kurians look like an octopus combined with a bat, or maybe a living, misshapen umbrella with a lot of eyes at the top. They can appear to shapeshift (it's an illusion though; they might be able to make themselves look like a wolf, but they can't bite like one). They also have a psychic link with their subordinates. Physically, they're weak -- if you or I could get it on the floor we could stomp it to death fairly easily.

Each Kurian animates a handful of "Reapers." These are the physical side of the creature. They come out at night because sunlight interferes with the mind-to-mind communication of the Kurian and their Reapers (sunlight doesn't kill them; they just aren't as effective and can go stupid without their master puppeting them). Reapers are tall, bony, human-looking, with nasty fangs and long, clawed fingers. When a Kurian wishes to speak to a human he does it through a Reaper. They're fast, tough and wear thick robes of bullet-proof material. They live off the blood of humans, whereas the Kurian connected to the Reaper gets psychic energy from the fear and agony of the victim -- soul sucking, if you will. Sometimes a Kurian will torment a victim for a while before killing it, as a chef might add spice and sauce to a dish, the human's emotional state adds flavor. The system's rather like a James Bond movie, you know how Bond always has to deal with the villain of the movie, plus the villain's tough "Oddjob" type indestructible henchman.

AW: What does military life look like in your Vampire Earth series?

EEK: It varies from region to region, as you see in the books. My hero, Val, comes from one of the larger, better-organized freeholds fighting the vampires (I loosely based it on Tito's anti-Germans in Yugoslavia, a partisan army which not only had military formations but functioning hospitals, schools, and so on).

AW: Have you served in the military yourself?

EEK: No, I was lucky enough to be the first male in the family to turn 18 without his country being in the middle of a war. My dad and the other veterans said I'd be better off going to college.

AW: I love Daphne DuMaurier too. What is your favorite book by her and why?

EEK: I like Rebecca a lot, but the one I read more than any other is "The Birds" in the Don't Look Now collection. It's darker and lonelier than the Hitchcock version. I admire DuMaurier for her perfect pacing, the stories seem to really move along, but she takes her time, if that makes any sense.

AW: How about Stephen King?

EEK: I started reading him in the 70s, I was one of the first generation "The Stand" fanatics. Even his minor characters seem so real, it makes everything in his books seem possible.

AW: How has Louis L'Amour influenced your work?

EEK: He knew how to create a hero. They were almost always tough, competent, intelligent men, and through much of the story they were using all their skills to avoid trouble and reduce conflict. Bad actors and events would finally overtake them, and they'd do what they had to do to survive.

AW: What do you mean by bad actors overtaking them?

EEK: With Louis L'Amour, like a lot of great classic westerns (think Shane), the hero often goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid conflict. By "bad actors" I mean the villains of the piece. Events could mean anything from a range war spiraling out of control to the Indian War the hero's been trying to prevent starting anyway. For example, in L'Amour's Shalako, Shalako Carlin has found a party of rich, treaty-breaking upper-class hunters on Apache lands and is trying to get them out to preserve the treaty -- if the outraged Apache's kill Senator so-and-so and Baron Von Whoozis and Lord Whatever, it means another Apache war. The twist is the hunters are actually hoping to start a little dust up with the Apaches, they're sure their skill with guns and the superiority of their rifles will allow them to prevail over a handfull of Indians.

Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven is in this vein, but with a twist, that being Clint's character was one of those villains in his youth.

AW: What kept you going when you doubted your ability to make it as an author?

EEK: As I was trying to get published, I was working in a series of not-too-interesting jobs. The way I looked at it, writing, even with zero chance of getting published, was an outlet for my imagination and creativity. Otherwise I might end up just drinking my nights away in a bar slumped in front of the TV.

AW: Are your books easy to get into if we start in the middle of the series? Or should readers only start with the first book?

EEK: The first book, Way of the Wolf, gives the most background to the world. I write in little three book mini-cycles with like titles, so it'd be best for a newbie to jump in with Wolf, or Valentine's Rising, or Fall With Honor.

AW: What do you think is the appeal for a long genre series?

EEK: In sf/fantasy, it tends to be either a character or set of characters that the readers love and want to see in new situations, or a world they enjoy returning to because it's alive in their minds. I try and do both.

AW: Does a day ever go by when you're not thinking about one or another of your characters -- not including during your writing time.

EEK: Yeah, that's just it. When you're a storyteller, a line of dialogue or a situation or a character might pop into your imagination any time, so you have to be ready to drop whatever you're doing and jot it down while it's fresh in your mind. I'm not one of those authors who has conversations and arguments with my characters. To me, they're more like historical figures and I'm trying to get the biography right.