"A Young Man Staring Out the Windows" by Mark Allan Gunnells

"The Path of Pebbles – (Excerpt One)" by John Kuhn

"The Good Servants" by Charles Kyffhausen

"A Young Man Staring Out the Windows" by Mark Allan Gunnells is a nice Twilight Zone style concept, but I don’t think it’s fleshed out enough in its flash fiction format. It’s a mystery story about a man trapped in a blank room with two windows, but at just over 800 words, there isn’t enough meat to truly get the reader sunk into the story.

By the time I started getting my head wrapped around what was going on, the story ended; it ended satisfactorily but still felt abrupt and rushed. I would have liked to have seen more character development, learned who the guy was, and watched him go through a rational process in figuring out his situation and try to to get out. As it is, Gunnells’s work is more concept than fully realized story.

John Kuhn’s “The Path of Pebbles – Excerpt One” reads like a long acid trip. An American college student finds a mysterious site with a circle-shaped story laid out in the jungles of Nepal before disappearing, fourteen years ago. Using this as a framing device initially confused me as I didn’t understand whether I was reading the student’s notes or the translated story. Also, while this is an excerpt, I would have liked to have seen the framing device brought full circle.  Generally, I found the concept to be unique and intelligent but the execution lacking.

The story itself is a blend of mythologies and religious imagery. Some of the scenes felt a little stock while others are interesting twists on established imagery, but I didn’t get a sense of purpose out of this excerpt, and I was really hoping it would all come together.

I don’t really know whether to take “The Good Servants” by Charles Kyffhausen seriously or not. The story seems to be an attempt to bridge light comedy and literary discourse. The story takes three time travelers and places them in the literary version of King Arthur’s Camelot. Not as madcap as Monty Python’s Spamalot or as serious as Marion Zimmer Bradley‘s Mists of Avalon, “The Good Servants” walks a line between sarcastic quips and a more serious effort.

Apparently, this is an except from Kyffhausen’s unpublished novel, Three Yankees in Camelot, which might explain some of the continuity glitches, e.g. King Arthur has a colt pistol and his men are armed with breach loading muskets, while later there are references to rifles, and then suddenly in the closing paragraphs, there is a reference to a steam-powered warship of some kind.

In all, I thought it was an interesting read, but I didn’t feel like I got a complete story. There were too many plot threads and events weaving around for one short story.