Subscribe to my newsletter and get a free story!
As part of recent updates at SFWA we recently revamped the Nebula Recommended Reading list to show up in alphabetical order. It’s a stopgap measure until the website gets re-designed, and to my mind has some of the same problems as presenting by order of number of recommendations. In musing that over, I mentioned to webmaster Jeremy Tolbert that I looked forward to the new school of aardvarkpunk we were inspiring. A half hour later this story appeared in my head.
This is a Patreon story, published thanks to the generous support of my patrons on there; they get access to the Chez Rambo Discord server, additional sponsor-only snippets and stories, plus sneak peeks at new drafts, discounts on Rambo Academy for Wayward Writer classes, and a chance to win my monthly giveaway. If you’d like to support indie publishing plus get stories, sign up to support me there!
Aardvark Says Moo
“Aardvark says moo,” says the clown, handing over the balloon animal.
My overly precocious kid squints her eyes. “No they don’t.” She folds her arms. No eight year old should be that definite about anything. Whatever happened to the idea of childish sense of wonder?
“I was being whimsical,” the clown explains. “Do you understand what that word means, little girl?”
Now he’s gone and done it. I could have warned him, but no one had consulted me since moment one of this interaction. The kid went up, the clown looked at her and started twisting a pink balloon around, and then he had to start being all whimsical.
“Whimsy,” my child says, “is playfully quaint or fanciful. A talking aardvark impersonating a cow is just dumb.”
At this point, a supernatural element enters my story. You may think it’d be something subtle, maybe the sort of knife edged was-it-real-or-not stratagem that Henry James could employ, but the fact of the matter was that it was a Valkyrie, walking up to look us over.
Maybe a woman dressed like a Valkyrie, you’re thinking. A costume party might have occurred to you, maybe, which means you’re going off on a total tangent, so lemme say this. Kid’s birthday party. Bouncy castle, hot dogs, cake. The only costume was the clown’s, and it wasn’t a particularly inspired one.
The Valkyrie moreover is real. Realer than real. Like a black hole of realness that made everything around her look like faded plastic. Her armor is made of golden scales. She smells like ozone and honey and looks like an angry supermodel with no makeup. She says, “Kyle Holiday, I have foretold that you die in the line of duty tonight but I will take you to Valhalla.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s been some mistake,” the clown says. “That’s my name, but I’m not going to die.”
“No one thinks they’re going to die,” the Valkyrie says significantly.
“Hang on,” my kid says. “This is my best friend’s birthday party and no one should die at it. She’s delicate. She’ll be traumatized for years. Take it elsewhere. What’s he supposed to die of, anyway?”
The Valkyrie listens to the air for a moment. “Peanut allergy.”
“I’m allergic to peanuts,” clown Kyle says cautiously, “but that’s why I don’t eat anything at these gigs.”
The Valkyrie shrugs.
“No, I mean it,” my kid says. “No one’s dying.” She grabs a napkin from the table and holds it out to the clown. “Maybe you breathe in some peanut particles. Tie this over your nose and face. Then get out. Better a flaky clown than a dead one.”
The Valkyrie says, “Who are you, to interfere with a hero’s death?”
“One, my name is Anna Louise Mayhew,” my kid says, her chin pointed at the Valkyrie, “and two, he’s at a kid’s birthday party.”
This Valkyrie listens to the air some more. This time it takes longer, and she gets a funny look on her face halfway through.
“Well,” she says, when she finally returns her attention to us, “he dies while working. There’s not that many clearly defined hero’s deaths around any more, but he faces down countless children.”
“And delights them,” she adds as an afterthought. She reaches out and tweaks the napkin off the clown’s face. “You don’t need that. You’ll like Valhalla.” She looks at my kid. “You’re Anna Louise Mayhew, huh?”
Something about the way she says it makes me step up and say, “Anna, why don’t you walk your friend to the gate?” I fold my arms, look the Valkyrie over. She’s about twice my size, could snap me like a twig, but she seems relaxed about it all. I say, “How do you know her name?”
“I take her, later on,” the Valkyrie said. “We always future-remember the important ones.”
I’m torn between pride and horror. “What? When?”
“Relax,” the Valkyrie says. She takes a piece of cake and it’s somehow reassuring, makes her seem a little less real and more like someone in a costume. “Not till long after you’re dead. They coax her out of retirement for it. She wins and saves humanity.”
I don’t really want to know anything more than that. I say, “So you’ll forgive her saving the clown?”
“It’s kinda pathetic, taking a clown to Valhalla,” she says. “Sometimes someone screws up the paperwork. This might be one of those times.”
Anna comes back and stands looking at the Valkyrie. I can’t tell if it’s fear or admiration or something else. I imagine her as a little old lady, facing down some unguessable enemy, that same solemn expression. The Valkyrie wanders off and vanishes into sparks that travel up into the sky. No one else seems to notice.
These sorts of things happen around my kid a lot, I’ve noticed. I say, “You were kinda hard on that clown about the moo thing.”
“Well, maybe,” she says. “I don’t like whimsy, though. Aardvark goes moo, how twee is that?”
I bet that Valkyrie’s looking forward to seeing her again.
...
This is a piece of flash fiction written last year – I just got around to going through the notebook it was in lately and transcribing the fictional bits. This didn’t take too much cleaning up. For context, think of the hills of southern California, and a writing retreat with no other human beings around, and thinking a great deal about fantasy and epic fantasy at the time.
Is this a Tabat story? Naw. Just a little flash piece.
...
Other pieces of this world are shown in Rappacini’s Crow, Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart, and Snakes on a Train. At some point this will become a novel — you may notice characters are converging on Seattle, where most of the action will take place, and I’ve got some stories in the works, most notably a novella, “Blue Train Blues,” about a high stakes race between car and train across a landscape plagued with vampires.
This is a Patreon post, funded by the generous patrons listed here. If you’d like to see more of these stories, consider becoming a patron.
Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?
Jemina noticed the Very Small Person the moment the little girl entered the train. The child paused in the doorway to survey the car before glancing down at her ticket and then at the other half of the hard wooden bench, high-backed, its shellac peeling, that Jemina sat on. Jemina tucked the macrame bag beside her in with her elbow.
The child was one of the last passengers on, which was why Jemina had been hoping against hope to have the bench to herself, at least for part of the two day trip to Kansas City. The train began to roll forward, a hoot of steam from the engine, a bell clang from the caboose at the back of the train, the rumble underfoot making the little blonde girl pick her way with extra caution, balancing the small black suitcase in one hand against the pillowy cloth bag in the other.
She arrived mid-car beside Jemina and nodded at her as she struggled briefly to hoist her suitcase up before the elderly man across the aisle did it for her. She plumped the cloth bag in the corner between sidearm and back and sat down with a little noise of delight as she looked around. Catching herself at the noise, she blushed, fixed her gaze sternly forward as she folded her hands in her lap, and peeped at Jemina sidelong.
Jemina tried to imagine how she might appear. She knew herself thin but nicely dressed and pale-skinned. The lace at her throat was Bruges, the cross around her neck gold, the gloves on her hands white and clean. She looked like a school-teacher, she imagined, but not a particularly nice one. She felt her lips thin further at the thought.
...
This post marks a change-up in my Patreon campaign – I will post content publicly. If you’re enjoying it and want to make sure it continues, please consider supporting my ongoing attempts with this publishing model! There are several levels of possible support, but you can do it for as little as a dollar a month.
I’m enjoying on retreat in California right now, which will explain what provoked this piece.
...
A lot of people are driving pledges with backer incentives. Here’s mine:
I plan to complete one story each week. At the end of the six weeks, all backers will receive copies of the stories written during the Write-a-thon along with a bonus story.
So I just wanted to point out – you get to pick the donation amount. In return, you’re getting at least seven Cat Rambo short stories, which, although they’ll be a bit drafty, I’d like to think is a pretty good value. 😉
You can sign up as a backer by clicking the Donate button on this page.
...
In honor of the occasion, here’s links to several of my love stories online. They might be a little dark at times…
...
Hey, if you’re a fellow Kindle-r, I found out today while looking that the five first five of the Mars books (aka Burroughs’ Barsoom novels) available for free in e-form, including the one the movie John Carter of Mars is based on, The Warlord of Mars.
...
The doorbell rang as soon as Simone’s hands were covered with dirt from repotting primroses. That was how it always was lately. She wiped her hands on a dish towel, regretting the dark smears as soon as she saw them. The dish towel landed in the sink; she hurried to the door.
As abrupt and perfumed as a magazine advertisement thrust in her face, a broad-toothed woman in red polka-dots that shouldn’t be chic, but were, atop a teeter of matching red heels.
Presenting her hand in a direct overhand shake, “I’m Cherry Abramson, Unit #8.”
Simone wished she’d washed her hand instead of just wiping it, but she shook anyhow. Cherry’s face remained set in the same smile, but somehow Simone was sure the other woman had noted the half-moons of dirt underneath her fingernails, the scatter of dirty dishes visible in the sink, the cloth across them like a soggy wick.
She squared herself in the doorway. No way was she asking this woman in for coffee. She didn’t want that appraising blue eye noting the stack of boxes, the unfolded laundry heaped on the sofa, already marked with a cat-shaped divot.
“I’m still in the middle of unpacking,” she said.
...
The sound of the car wheels whispering along the road meshes with Grandmother’s snores and the faint noise of my mother’s humming as she drives. She prefers not to have the radio on during long trips.
Inside the car, it’s cold as a mall midsummer. Cold as a clinic, a hospital, a morgue. I can’t quite see my breath, but I’m wearing a sweater, while outside it’s 97 degrees — according to the dashboard gauge. The air conditioner roars its displeasure as we roll down the highway.
We are traveling with my reluctant grandmother from Mullinville, Kiowa County, Kansas, where she has spent all her life, to a West Coast nursing home near the neighborhood where my mother and I both live. Behind us are: her house, now up for sale; her Chrysler, also listed in the local paper; and her possessions, which my mother and I will return to sort through in a week.
The landscape spreads out with the pancake flatness of Kansas around us. Cottonwoods trace the edges of a meandering creek and its unseen waters. Irrigation sprinklers spread out green circles only visible from above, where a ribboned contrail shows a plane’s progress. Shimmers of summer heat prelude our arrival, as though we chase an oasis that never manifests.
My mother glances over at me. “Can’t sleep?”
“I thought you might want company.”
“I appreciate it. Though I can’t say that the silence hasn’t been welcome.” She rolls her eyes expressively towards the back seat.
“I heard that,” my grandmother says. It is unclear whether she is talking in her sleep or responding, so we wait. More faint snores come from the back seat, so we go back to talking quietly.
...
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. This site is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
