Fantasy

We left our toys in the yard sixty-some-odd years ago. You’d think, small as we were then, all the time since, it’d be impossible to find the old place.

I drove the avenues of childhood, past the gutted gas station, the place pop took us for soft serve on those summer days when I felt my feet cooking in my sneakers. A left turn where a magnificent camellia once dropped blooms. Only a stunted armature remained.

My wife, June, was the first to see it. She called to me from the deck behind the house. “Tim? Come here. Quick.”

“What is it?” I yelled from the kitchen.

“You’d better come see for yourself.”

When Nathan Rahos slumped onto a loveseat in his office, too drained to drive home after a fourteen-hour-long workday, he didn’t expect an adventure. His work as a junior accountant at the National Bureau of Fruit and Vegetables provided poor fodder for dreams, much like his personal life. So, as he dropped into a deep sleep and found himself strolling among hundreds of bookshelves, he felt like a trespasser.

Everything had been so much simpler before the cats learned to talk.

My phone buzzed on the end table, probably a morning text from Jeremy. He liked to send a smiling selfie as he lay in bed, hair still mussed from sleep. Could I grab the phone without the cats noticing I was awake? I slid my hand to the side…

“I'm king of the hill!” Ripley settled on my hip, the highest point on the bed. Slowly extending his nails, he pierced my sweatpants to prick the skin beneath. “Are you awake? I'm hungry. It's time to get up. Can we have canned food today?”

This story originally appeared in Vast Chasm Magazine in July 2022.

"I wonder if it's time to reconsider--" Dr. Jane starts.

I feel the back of my neck tighten. I know what she's going to say and she's raised it before and I'm not going to have it. "No."

She gives me a puzzled look. "What's wrong with using the Super Goblin Moving Company?"

I glance down at the small vase of yellow daffodils placed on the coffee table. "Nothing. It just isn’t for me."

"And why is that?"

Marcus was seven problems deep into his homework when Mara barged her way into his room. He had been despairing slightly over indefinite integration - definite numbers had been alright, but it was the vastness of the numbers and formulae that was starting to fry his brain. By the time she had arrived with armfuls of manga in tow he had begun to google “jobs that don’t require math”, a trancelike state interrupted by the smacking of cracked spines onto the desk.

“I wanna play pretend at something!”

Ariyaan’s knees tremble as we stand before Lord Shiva. It is a sight to behold, a moment to cherish, and a victory to savor that his penance to seek Shiva’s boon has finally borne fruit. He drops to the ground, lays flat on his stomach, and prostrates before the Cosmic Destroyer.

Parinda raced through the jungle, hot rain pelting her face, sharp thorns scraping her legs. The villagers' angry voices echoed through the jungle; they’d been chasing her all night. Trickling sunlight warmed her face. She pushed through wet leaves and stepped out of the jungle. The Cliffs of Ascendence lay just ahead. The ancestral place for her people to complete the transformation.

Carrianne smoothed down the front of her apron while she waited for the last few seconds to count down. The tomato timer sprang to life, the chime vibrating it across the Formica countertop; she pulled the tray of fresh melba toasts out of the oven, resting them on the cooling rack, and finally silenced the tomato. This was the last thing before the guests arrived, to top the hors d’oeuvres.