"The New Ecology," by Holly Phillips
"Show Me Where the Mudmen Go," by Barth Anderson
"Where Magic lives" by S.A. Bolich
"Homing Instinct" by Ann Marston
"Hounds and Moonlight" by Harry Connolly
"Pearlie Little" by Randy D. Ashburn
"Enter the Worms" by Jean-Claude Dunyach
"The Frontier Archipelago" by Charles Coleman Finlay
"Kolorado" by Steve Mohn

"The New Ecology" by Holly Phillips
We're in good hands from the start of Holly Phillips' tale, which grabs with the first sentence. Someone is stalking the young Millennium. It is quickly clear, however, that this is no tired predator/prey relationship: Millennium attracts things—strange little bits of discarded tin and wire, wheels and strings somehow endowed with life. The longer Millennium stays in a place, the more these things declare themselves to her. Her human stalker is after the why and how of such things and follows her almost like a naturalist. That is, until Millennium confronts him. Their meeting and its outcome resulted in a weird, delightful, strangely hopeful little story and I wish there were more like it.

"Show Me Where the Mudmen Go" by Barth Anderson
Weird, delightful, and strangely hopeful can be just as readily applied to Barth Anderson's tale of the mudmen, which avoids every cliché I thought it would veer toward. Burt is recently divorced and has a loving if troubled relationship with his teenage daughter. And he has also noticed the mudmen, strange man-sized beings that howl at the moon and leave strange artifacts made of trash for Burt to find. In the end the author avoids the overly used speculative fiction trope of playing with the reader's sense of reality without ever answering it (is he really seeing this, or is he going insane?). Yes, Burt grows obsessed, and job and sanity may be in jeopardy as he seeks contact and further communication with the mudmen. But he also finds another who has seen them, and in the end the encounter with things man is not meant to know is empowering and redemptive. It was a pleasant surprise.

"Where Magic lives" by S.A. Bolich
You can sense where S.A. Bolich's story is going from the third page, but that in no way detracts from the pleasure of the tale. Rayburn, an undertaker, realizes that the corpse of the pauper that has arrived is none other than Eleanor Darcy, the writer whose books he loved as a child. So inspiring were the stories to him that he selects the best possible coffin and even nicks some flowers from a funeral being readied in another room so that she can have a proper sendoff. It is little surprise when he realizes the only attendees are characters from her books, who step forward to give moving speeches. The prose can veer toward too much telling, even melodrama, but the tale had a gentle, touching power that should not be dismissed. I think many of us feel that characters fashioned by our favorite writers have enriched our lives, and it is nice to think that they are granted a kind of life—and that they would honor their creator's passing. A nice idea, and well presented.

"Homing Instinct" by Ann Marston
"Homing Instinct" is well-told, and it is clear Ann Marston knows her way around planes and flying—the details of the plane trips within this story are vivid and completely real. The problem with the tale is that the premise seems to hinge on a surprise that really isn't one. We are told early on that the narrator's lover, Seth, has died in a plane crash and had startling blue eyes. A kitten with the same startling blue eyes pops up and manages to come along on a plane flight (Marston even points out that white cats are said by some to be returned spirits). It is no shocker that the cat manages to help guide them in the right direction when the plane malfunctions, or that the narrator, who initially does not care for cats, decides she might like this one. I'd like to see Marston use her vivid descriptive talents and knowledge to tell a different tale of planes and storms.

"Hounds and Moonlight" by Harry Connolly
Harry Connolly turns a nice surprise in his short story, only the third of his to see professional print. Kama is a woman living a bleak life in a bleak land. When the houndsman arrives with his pack on the hunt for an elf the villagers suspect of killing their children, Kama is drawn to his company. She yearns to escape from her abusive husband and dark life, and the houndsman seems to be the way out, though not in the way this reader expected. This was a tense and creepy little tale, and took a path I did not expect.

"Pearlie Little" by Randy D. Ashburn
Randy D. Ashburn crafted a fabulous little horror story that careens from striking to haunting almost from the opening. Pearlie Little is the daughter of a witch woman of the Appalachians—an awful, twisted, psychotic woman who unfortunately knows some real magic. And she's determined to keep Pearlie on her twisted narrow path, free of the mother's conception of sin. Descriptive, shocking, original—the story builds expertly and with great excitement… only to fall in the final few paragraphs because Pearlie has sought and dreamed of freedom from both her mother and the undead baby her mother has presented her with, and when she at last achieves that freedom she does not take it. The end is chilling, certainly, but not the one the character was building toward, and left me unfulfilled.

"Enter the Worms" by Jean-Claude Dunyach
Here's another gripping, disgusting horror story (only in horror, I suppose, can the word "disgusting" be used to praise). But though it is well described by Jean-Claude Dunyach, and though we sympathize with the main character, it was simply too disquieting for me to embrace. Its central character is a boy named Jack at some sort of religious boarding school, probably in our century. He is regularly abused, verbally, physically, and sexually, by another boy, Davey, and his cronies. When Jack's mother dies, Davey tells him that corpses line up to have sex with all new corpses in the graveyard. Davey plans to lure Jack into the graveyard at night (to protect his mother from the other corpses) so he and the other bullies can scare him. Jack instead kills Davey, and the corpses end up having sex with his dead body because it is fresher than Jack's mother. She too lines up to have sex with the dead boy–a soulless corpse who does not even notice Jack's existence. Perhaps this is exactly the sort of tale true horror fans crave, but I found its themes of child abuse, necrophilia, and suffering particularly unpleasant. Why should corpses robotically come to life only to have sex with other corpses? I won't be rereading it.

"The Frontier Archipelago" by Charles Coleman Finlay
Clearly I wasn't the intended audience for Charles Coleman Finlay's tale. I'm not much of a slice of life fan, so this slightly longer than one page tale falls flat for me. It portrays a day in the life of a miner working the asteroids, including the death of a friend. It may be suggesting that life so closely integrated with machinery and technology is less human, but I don't think so. I'm not sure what it suggests, and at the end was left with the same feeling I am with most slice of life stories—I didn't see the point and I didn't get to know the characters. If Finlay succeeded, it was in making this science fiction tale feel exactly like slice of life tales set in the modern era. Perhaps that was his goal.

"Kolorado" by Steve Mohn
I had mixed feelings about Steve Mohn's tale. At first blush I wasn't sure I liked it, but the tale has stuck with me. It's a vampire story with some of the usual details, but has a refreshing perspective on them. Mohn suggests that there would be little glamour, pleasure, or thrill in such a fate—unlike the fate presented by other writers—and he runs with it. We don't even know from the start that Maxi, the eternally young woman who is our strange protagonist, is a vampire, though it grows clear pretty quickly that there's something strange going on with her and the man who first seems to be her pimp. I think lovers of vampire fiction will enjoy this crisp and interesting take on the genre.