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  • The Stork’s Feather

    The fortune teller studied the side of my palm. Her slender fingers traced the lines of my calloused hand, turning it this way and that to catch the light. I kept my eyes off of her, concentrating on the colorful tapestries on the wall. I knew what she was looking for. And I already knew what she would find.

    “You’ll never have any children,” she said.

    “I know,” I replied.

    Those lines had been scraped off of the side of my hand years ago. She must have seen the half line. The faint, broken line that signified my unborn child. She was tactful not to mention it. Most practitioners loved to bring it up. They liked to play it up to prove that they knew their business. But she sounded like she was giving me the specials. ‘You’ll never have kids, oh and the soup of the day is broccoli cheese.’ She didn’t even sound sad about it.

    “It doesn’t have to be this way if you don’t want it,” the woman said. (more…)

  • The Cow of Cthulhu

    On the morning of the unfathomable event, I, Robert Joseph Edgerton III, was awaken from a fitful slumber by a heavy knock upon my bed chamber door.

    “Bobby Joe,” my mother said. “You’d best get out of that bed and get to breakfast. Those chores ain’t gonna to do themselves.”

    I wiped a crust of sleep from the corner of my eye. My faithful feline companion Applejack stretched and then leapt from my feather-stuffed mattress. Applejack and I had spent my sleeping hours exploring the Dreamlands city of Ulthar, using sleep techniques promoted by my renowned professors. My feline guide had escorted me on a tour of the legendary village where no man may kill a cat. (more…)

  • The Cat Came Back

    My cell phone rang at two minutes of four in the morning. I swiped my thumb across the green ‘answer’ button, put the phone to my ear and grunted.
    “Meow?” came the reply. It was my cat.
    “Waffles?” I cleared my throat and sat up. I hadn’t heard from my cat in two months.
    “Meow.” She sounded sad and exhausted and I could guess why. She’d gotten herself a job and apparently she was—predictably—in over her head.
    “You’re not going to try to tough it out?” It was kind of cruel of me to string her along. We both knew she couldn’t handle this.
    “Meow.” It was a long, drawn out meow. Almost like back in the days when she still lived with me and her food bowl wasn’t entirely full and she desperately needed me to cover the entire bottom of the dish with kibble.
    “Okay, okay. I’ll be there by tomorrow.” I hung up. I hadn’t said ‘I told you so.’
    *** (more…)

  • Home in Time for Cake

    Captain Sydlak glanced in the mirror to make sure every thread and decoration in her uniform was crisp and perfect before going to greet her passengers. Her Majesty’s Post and Courier Service expected every detail to be shipshape and Captain Sydlak was proud of her ship and crew.

    She twitched her cap firmly into place and made her way down the short passage. Jovillar, the ship’s steward, was already there with the latest manifest.

    “Only six passengers this trip, Captain,” Jovillar reported.

    “Welcome to the HMS Whitechapel,” Captain Sydlak greeted each passenger as they boarded. “Our next stop is Faraway Station. Steward Jovillar will help you with your luggage.” The last passenger smiled nervously, clutching a very large teddy bear.

    “How sweet!” Sydlak exclaimed, hoping to put the woman at ease.

    “It’s for my daughter,” the woman explained. “Her birthday is tomorrow. I promised her I would be there.”

    “We’ll be certain of it,” the Captain reassured her. “The Royal Post and Courier pride ourselves on getting our passengers and cargo to their destinations safely and on time.” (more…)

  • Autumn’s Fall

    Flutter shivered as the cold north wind blew a handful of red leaves past her and whipped them out of sight. The Heart Tree had already lost so many of its leaves. It couldn’t have many left. Would she reach it before the last one fell?

    The gonging of a bell, deep and resonate, announced another leaf had gone. She quickened her pace, curling her useless wings around her to ward off the chill. She had to get to the red oak at the center of the city.

    The corn stalks that circled the city, dead and barren from the early frost, were bent at awkward angles from the wind. She wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light or if a figure stood among them, watching her. She glanced nervously over her shoulder and jumped as stalks cracked behind her.

    She broke into a run, dry laughter—or was it only the wind?—at her heels.

    Once she was past the city wall, she put her hands on her knees and panted, trying to catch her breath. Not that she was safe. Far from it. Everything in this city would try to stop her on her quest. (more…)

  • January Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    Happy New Year, friends! Welcome back to another year of free fiction from us here at the Confabulator Cafe. We’re brainstorming all new prompts and preparing for another awesome year of storytelling to entertain you all.

    We’re kicking off this year with a 2015 throwback, though. January is going to be what we’re calling a “leftover” month, because after the holidays, we’re too tired to cook and we still have tons of frozen leftovers from Thanksgiving and the holidays.

    So visit us all this month for a bit of a “best-of” as we all revisit our favorite prompt from 2015. And keep coming back all year for brand new, free fiction that we write just for you.

    Here’s the January schedule!

    Friday, January 1: “Autumn’s Fall” by Sara Lundberg
    Friday, January 8: “Home in Time for Cake” by Aspen Junge
    Monday, January 11: “The Cat Came Back” by Emily Mosher
    Friday, January 15: “The Cow of Cthulhu” by Jack Campbell, Jr.
    Friday, January 22: “The Stork’s Feather” by Dianne Williams
    Friday, January 29: “The Workers’ Tower” by Ashley M. Hill

  • The Gift of Flesh

    On the first day of Christmas, I received a big toe. I stepped out of the front door of my house with my greyhound rescue Clever. The crisp winter air cut through my jogging gear. I cursed the 5:30 AM alarm, and my veterinarian’s insistence that Clever needed more exercise.
    I didn’t see the package. Not at first. I leaped off the doorstep and plunged forward in to the wind only to be yanked back by the leash.

    “Clever, come on boy,” I said, raising my voice in the high, slightly embarrassing tone that I only used with him.

    Clever sat anchored to the concrete. His sniffed a small package on the ice-glazed step, snorting as if he might inhale the thing. I snatched the cardboard box from beneath his nose. (more…)

  • The Fruit Cake Invasion

    “What possessed you to input a request for fruit cake to begin with?” the repair man asked.

    I shrugged. “Nostalgia.” I leaned to the side as the food replicator shot out another rock-hard fruit cake. I grimaced as glass shattered. I’d thought I had moved everything to safety. Apparently not.

    “I’ve never seen anything like this. You say it’s spewed out nearly a thousand of these suckers?” The man scratched his ass as he dodged the next projectile.

    I sighed and surveyed the various Old-Earth Christmas relics, now nearly buried in piles of fruit cake: an aluminum cone that I thought was supposed to be a tree, a tube that said Tootsie Roll that had a slit in the plastic of one end, two tiny crinkled pieces of silver material, and an over-sized sock with the name “Gertie” glued to the cuff in silver glitter, as well as several glass ornaments in bright greens, reds, and silvers, all in various stages of crushed, chipped, and broken.

    I’d also found two Bing Crosby albums, a faded red hat edged with gnarly brown fuzz that might have been white once, a creepy elf-like creature that was missing both eyes, and a hard lump of something that might have been food once, wrapped in plastic with a label that said Grandma’s Home Made Fruit Cake. (more…)

  • The Smell of Christmas

    The coffee shop smelled like Christmas when I walked in—rotten eggnog, burnt pie, and BO. I pinched the bridge of my nose, of all the days he chose to stop living up to my expectations, it was on the day that more than anything I needed to guzzle the world’s largest coffee—as advertised on the chalk signboard—in peace.

    I drew in a deep breath—through my mouth, because there are some smells you’d rather not be in your nose—and winded my way through the overcrowded tables to one in the back corner populated by a man in a stained crimson hoodie with the hood pulled up over a baseball cap.

    He grunted and pushed one of the cups of coffee closer to me. I watched as it sloshed over the sides of the cup and dribbled onto the table. I clasped my hands in front of me on the table and leaned forward. “What’s this all about?”

    “It’s good to see you, Sam,” he grunted. “Thanks for coming out on such short notice.”

    “Sure. Whatever. Are you in trouble?”

    “Why would you think that?”

    “Because the only reasons you’ve ever called me in the past decade is because you needed something.” I tried not to breathe in too deeply in his presence.

    “Fine. I was trying to be… nevermind. I finally found it.” He hauled a box out of his rank backpack and dropped it on the table. He’d wrapped it in dark green paper with snowmen and Santa hats all over it. Plaid ribbon wrapped about it several times and finished in an oversized, lopsided bow.”

    “Found what?”

    “It.” He gestured at the box. “It’s in there.” (more…)

  • What Kind of Mother

    I had thought I was doing right by Levi—I took him to church, to concerts, museums—but here is a severed rat leg telling me otherwise. (more…)