So we're rewatching my favorite cartoon from when I was a kid – The X-Men. To my delight, my children are loving this 30-year-old series, and I’m equally enthralled, but not just for nostalgia’s sake. You see, the writers pack a lot in above the heads of its target audience, like Beast quoting Dostoevsky, Wolverine wrestling with the grace and mercy of God when conversing with the papal Nightcrawler, or Magneto floating down from the sky and remarking in his debut, “Oh brave new world!”

               This speaks of not just the writers’ freedom to infuse their work with what has inspired them, but of their literary diet, which I think is a stark contrast to most of what we see today.

               As they say, garbage in, garbage out.

               But the classics matter, for they were penned by people who lived full and heavy lives, whether struggling under the weight of America’s great depression, fighting in blood-soaked trenches of world wars, or chained to industrial death-mills like the Soviet Union. Freedom manifests in many ways, and so does its nemesis, Tyranny. Meanwhile, Modern Writer pens stories from the comforts of his couch, signaling his empty virtues across the wires while labeling his microwave outlet tripping a breaker an emergency (ask this electrician how he knows).

               Yeah, the struggle is real.

               We all love to give lip service to ideals like Freedom, but for so much of my fellow man, why does it stop there? Sure, what you read matters. So does what you write. But far, far more importantly…

               It’s how you live.

 

       What's better than publishing one amazing story? Two! That's right folks, this is our debut double issue, and it won't be our last. From here on out, whenever our featured story is on the shorter side, we'll be publishing a second story right on its heels - ain’t that nice? Not only does it mean more material for readers, but more chances to get published for writers!

       And the big news? Let's just say we've worked a miracle, folks, a real Festivus Christmas miracle, and will be announcing via our featured video (which appears at the top of our homepage) any day now. Hint: we've brought on an absolute legend. No, not in the writing space. Think bigger. Think broader. Think one of the greatest icons of American sports! Why, and for what purpose, you ask? 

       Well that - like children anxious for Christmas day - you'll just have to wait and find out =)

By Andrew Hughes

 

           The wind slashes at our backs, blowing snow in great, swirling plumes as we make our way east along the thousand-mile track. Roseanne, Gillard, and I press forward encased in stolen officer parkas. The track cuts across the ocean below, forming a thin slice across the endless blue plain. A hundred yards beneath our feet, the arctic water laps and crashes against the base of the support beams, freezing to the metal scaffolding before the next wave can carry it away. 

           Every mile, Gillard turns around, faces the west, kneels, and presses his gloved hands to the metal rail. Far off, obscured by distance and storm, the smokestacks of Iceherst still burn. For a hundred years, it has been the final destination for people like us. The thousand-mile track, the only way in and the only way out. Gillard stares for a long moment, watching for the light, sensing for the vibrations. Eventually, the train will come again. 

           Rosanne stumbles and I catch her before she collapses. Through the snowsuit, I can feel her emaciation, behind her goggles I can see her fear, justified fright for what will happen when we next see the light. The tracks feel emptier now. Six days ago, we were seven. The first to attempt an escape in a decade. Now, we are only three. Rosanne regains her footing and lifts a chunk of grotto protein from the pocket of her jacket. When she pulls her balaclava down, I see her lips, as black and rigid as the coal we shoveled, as if all moisture has been pulled from her mouth. She yanks the mask back up and I can see it wrinkle and bob as she chews through the leathery morsel with broken teeth. Her shoulders droop and her eyelids flutter. Soon, she will collapse. I turn to tell Gillard that we must rest, but he’s already begun walking again.

           The blizzard is constant and the tracks offer no protection from its bombardment. The walls of the prison had encased us and the coal we shoveled had kept us warm. There are no cells in Iceherst. When our revolution had failed, the guards hadn’t dragged us off to some dungeon. They’d chained us ten instigators together in the yard wearing only our dormitory gear. We’d huddled together for warmth, taking turns at the center of the pile. It had been the coldest night. I still have the scars on my flesh between thumb and palm where I’d bitten down to make sure I could still feel something. Pain was better than the overwhelming numbness. By the next morning, five of the group had lost fingers or limbs to frostbite. Three had lost everything.

           And because of this cold, the guards taunted us by leaving the gate open. They tossed a pile of officer jackets and a bundle of plexiglass goggles by the mess hall door. The message was clear. Go ahead, wander off the reservation. There’s nothing out there for you except for the cold, and the ocean, and the train.

           Gillard steps nimbly over the break in the tracks with his head raised. Every few minutes, he glances over his shoulder and I know he doesn’t see us, he’s only looking for the light, because if he did see us, he’d notice Rosanne stumbling, nearly slipping, on the verge of collapsing into unconsciousness. We have not slept in six days. There’s been no place to stop and no time to rest, for the train is always coming. When we’d discussed this, kneeling in the latrines after lights out, the water rushing from the faucets to prevent our voices from carrying, it had seemed so simple. Gillard had broken it down in such a convincing manner with his little paper models.

           “The thousand-mile track is really only a little over nine hundred miles,” he’d explained. “The average person, with the right motivation, can walk forty miles in eight hours. According to the officer’s map, about halfway, there’s a lighthouse.” He set down a paper cutout of Iceherst, then an outline of a lighthouse, the two structures separated by a boot length of cracked bathroom tile. “A lighthouse means land, and supplies. At less than 500 miles, and at the speed of forty miles every eight hours with rests in between,” he pinched the paper avatar of Rosanne between his thumb and index finger and began walking her along an invisible line from Iceherst, “we could reach the lighthouse in just over seven days. Now,” he pulled the cutout of a paper train from the pocket of his dormitory pants. “How often does the train come?”

           Rosanne had answered him. Once every six days.

           “Very good, Rosie. So, if we can time this just right and leave right after the most recent supply, we only have to worry about avoiding it twice – once coming, and once going.”

           It had all seemed so simple. Seven days, two train passes, half a thousand miles, and we could be free. But now, as I look at Rosanne taking slow, wobbling steps across the snow-crusted slats, it becomes clear how unprepared we were. Ahead, Gillard turns, drops to one knee, and presses his hands to the rail. Behind the goggles, his eyes strain against the blinding white and wait for any flash of light. Rosanne falls to her knees, then lays face down against the tracks.

           I kneel beside Gillard. “We need to rest!” I shout above the roar of the wind. In response, the howl dies to a whisper, as if the elements themselves are mocking us. 

           He waves a dismissive hand, then places it back upon the rail. 

           “She’s going to die. We need to rest, sleep in shifts, get ready for the next pass.”

           “There’s no time,” he shouts back.

           “What do you mean there’s no time? She’s going to die.” 

           “We need to get off the tracks.” Gillard stands and faces the east. “If she can’t make it, let her join the others.” 

           I clench my fists and stand facing his back. “What do you not understand? She needs to sleep.” 

           He laughs so loud I can hear it above the storm. “Understand? I’m the only one who understands. There are no guarantees in this world. Even if we reach the coast, there’s no telling what we might find. They may be waiting to round us right back up for all we know, but I’ll be damned if my feet do not stand on solid ground again. You two can stay, you can leap overboard, you can go back, but I’m going forward.” 

           “You’re insane,” I bellow, my voice mixing with the howl of the wind.

           “Go ahead, crawl back. Stay safe and warm in your prison. This,” he holds his arms out. “This is freedom. This is all the world has to offer.”

           I step towards him when Rosanne tugs at my pant leg. She is pointing over her shoulder at a pulsing yellow light on the horizon.

The train has come.

           I grab her parka and drag her weight to the edge of the tracks. Gillard scrambles over first, twisting around and lowering himself until he’s clinging to the scaffolding. I help Rosanne to the edge, take both her hands, and lean back as her body drops over the side. In the dead space between the tracks, I see her hook both legs around the metal post. I release her hands, the right, then the left. When I look back up, the light is a piercing glow upon the sweeping flurries, leaving blind spots in my vision. I crawl to the side, duck over, and cling to the metal. As I remove my hands from the tracks, grinding gears and screeching pistons replace the howl of the wind.

           The beam is cold and its coat of ice shifts beneath my grasp. I clench my legs tight and press my body to the metal so I’m looking at Rosanne. She’s facing me and I can see the terror in her eyes. “It’ll be okay!” I shout, but my voice is washed away as the train pounds the tracks. I shut my eyes - searing sparks and shards of ice raining down upon us - and pray for it to pass. The screeching of metal, the roar of churning gears, the quaking vibrations drown my senses. The moment stretches on for eternity, as if the train is as endless as the tracks themselves. My thoughts rattle as the ear-splitting roar consumes me. I cry out but it is a silent, hollow scream against the noise. Through the blackness of my eyelids, I can feel my tears pouring out, filling the goggles, creating a tiny pool that rocks left and right against the lenses, splashing up onto my brow.

           Then, it stops. 

           My hands are numb and my vision blinded with tears. The screeching has left me deaf. The only noise is the dull throb in my ears. And as I claw blindly back up and onto the tracks, the sound dissipates to nothing.

           I pull down my hood, peel off my goggles, and scream an empty scream. 

           The world responds with silence. 

           Slowly, the sound of the wind returns, first as a whisper, then as a howl. I summon the strength to crawl to the edge and drop my hand to help Rosanne back onto the track.

           My fingers grasp at nothing but cold air.

           “You see it now?” Gillard asks. He knocks chunks of ice from his parka with gloved palms. “There was no time.”

           I shout her name at the water, commanding the surf to surrender her back to me. The waves continue to roll, hurling defiant spray against the posts below.

           “She wasn’t strong enough,” Gillard says. “It’s better that we found out now.”

           I push myself to my feet and roar loud enough to silence the wind. My vision dances - flashes of blotchy reds and swirling whites - as I charge. He’s still facing the ocean when I slam into him, striking his back with all my pent-up rage.

           Gillard hangs in the dead space, as if the storm will hold him for all eternity, then descends. There is no rebuke, no curse on his lips, and no satisfaction for me. His surprise is but a fleeting thing – a moment there and gone, like life itself. Then the ocean consumes him, and I’m alone.

           I walk for miles.

           The wind slices, the ocean crashes; nothing changes, but I know that’s not true. They’re all gone now and I feel my resolve bleed out. My body aches, my legs grow numb, and I collapse. My tears melt the snow and I make no attempt to rise again. What reason is there? Everyone is gone now, taken by the train or the currents below. Now, I will be too. Without them, I’m nothing more than another obstacle to be crushed, ground to pieces beneath the gears. 

           I lay in this numbing acceptance when something flashes amongst the swirling snow. I have to squint my eyes to cut through the blinding whiteness. When I regain my vision and stare out toward the distant coast, I’m greeted by the flash of a lighthouse beam.

           Silently, I struggle to my feet, slide on my goggles, and stumble onward. 

 

~~~

About the author:

          Andrew Hughes has been writing and publishing stories for the past decade. They have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Story Unlikely, Penumbric and on the No Sleep Podcast. His fantasy novella, Children of the Arc, was published in 2023 by TWB Press. He currently lives in Arizona, teaching kids and mediating heated debates between his roommates, a Maine Coon cat and the world’s most rambunctious husky. 

By Raymie Martin

 

           Edna watched as the young yeti from the post room upended the mail sack on to her desk. She cursed the gods who had begun posting images of themselves on spectral media, posing, quill in one hand, chin(s) in the other as they pondered over paper, thus beginning a craze for corporeal correspondence. Telepathy is so yesterday, Mercury had written, pictured with a pigeon. As he had the monopoly on carrier birds, he was probably raking it in, literally, an image of guano poo popping into her mind. Astral Weekly didn’t have the budget for recruitment so someone in-house would have to pick up the extra work.  Edna.

           Eyeing the rainbow spread of letters, she knew she’d have to miss her evening yoga class, and glared across the office at Astral Weekly’s editor, willing one of his heads to drop off and into his skinny latte. It’d never work; she’d wished it many times before. She knew he’d only picked on her because yesterday she’d accused him of taking the last ginger nut from the tin.

           Edna was prepared. In the ladies’ powder room that morning she had borrowed Dora-the-demon’s diamond emery board and filed each nail into a sharp point. Now opening the envelopes was a cinch. She was also methodical—despite the rest of the office muttering she was a martyr to their emotions—and faced with the herculean task of answering every letter (a policy ordained from on high) she formulated a plan. Realizing many of the writers had similar problems, she began sorting the letters into piles.  

           I (we) love him (her, it, them) but he (she, it, them) doesn’t notice me (us).

           Edna pulled the paper and glue from the drawer. She could draft a standard answer for each and then cut and paste it into her replies.

#

           The To-Be-Sorted pile was dwindling, which should have pleased her, but it didn’t. The sadness and struggle in the letters had seeped into her soul. So many unhappy beings; so much pain in the universe. She needed something to chase away the gloom. What about this? I had sex with next door’s dragon, and it was scorching! Edna grinned. She had a couple of flame-throwers on speed dial and she could do an in-depth piece. It would go in the winter solstice supplement. (Forty-eight full-color pages, forty-three of which were adverts for pills, potions and spring bulbs.) She started a new pile. Here was another one. My concubine’s in love with her doppelganger. Is she a narcissist? She could twist the answer into a celeb double-page and interview her mate, Echo, on the pretext of asking her advice. The Ed liked a good photo spread, and Echo was a stunner, though her looks were fading. 

           Edna peered at the parchment in her hand. It looked familiar. Putting it to one side, she shuffled the missives. Yes, one, two…. there were six similar letters. Same shade of parchment, same ink, same hand. Three fell into the categories for a cut-and-paste reply. Letter four said I slept with two nymphs and now both say they are pregnant. So, the writer was male. However, letter five, My fella keeps ogling Artemis. Should I get a boob job?  suggested otherwise. But what to make of the sixth? Help! I’m a hedgehog who suffers from nightmares. I’m dreading hibernation.

           Was someone having a laugh? No, these letters were genuine. The writer was suffering, or believed they were, which in Edna’s book amounted to the same thing. One by one she lifted them to her nose. Eyes closed, she breathed in the writer. Deep, deep. She opened her eyes again. Of course. Why hadn’t she realized? Picking up her pen, she began,

 

~~~

About the author:

       Raymie Martin loves reading and writing (but not ‘rithmetic), and although that makes her sound seven years old, she is in fact, several multiples of that. Having completed an MA in Creative Writing, she is currently editing her first full-length historical murder mystery.

 

 

My father loved horses, but he loved good deals even more. When someone had a horse with issues, he'd buy the horse on the cheap, and then tell me to train it and make it rideable.

 

I was a scrawny teenager then. I had to pit my 135 pounds soaking wet against an easily spooked beast weighing a thousand pounds or more. These horses would go wild at any loud sound, or if you lifted your hand too fast, or if a horsefly bit them. There was a black Morgan gelding I had lunged and worked with for a week that I thought I had figured out. So, I took him out on a ride with friends feeling pretty proud of myself.

 

When we turned back home I discovered his real issue and why Dad had gotten him so cheap. Barn sour. Worst I'd ever seen. Most horses like the comfort of the barn, but some go crazy to get back to it. This one galloped flat out like he was at the Kentucky Derby, and no matter how much I shouted whoa or pulled those reins, he wouldn't let up. I finally cranked the right rein around the saddle horn and had his head winched in so far his neck was bent to where I could stare him in the eye, and he in mine. He still galloped flat out as if he could see the path ahead.

 

I couldn't stop him. I figured it might be better for both of us if I gave him his head so he could at least see where he was going--there were several fences we needed to navigate around. Thankfully, I made it back alive and in the saddle with only a bruised leg where he slammed into a fence post as he turned into the barn. Some of those turns were at such high speeds they should have thrown me, but I never let go.

 

That horse was Charlie. I gave him a new name that day. From then on, he was Charlie Horse, the most dangerous horse I've ever ridden and trained. He wasn't as big as Dad's Quarter Horse, but he had a fire in him and couldn't stand to be in second place when we raced with friends--I just had to be sure that race always pointed away from the direction of the barn.

 

Dad gave him to me and forbid anyone else from riding Charlie Horse. You could only ride him if you understood his triggers, and you could only know those triggers if you had ridden him and had a deep understanding of his issues. He could have injured or killed someone else.

 

Why share a bit of my horse history with you? Because there's a couple of Super Secrets here you should know.

#

Ever had someone puff up their chest and explain something to you that you already knew? It usually starts with a preamble: "Well, actually, it's not like that, it's like this." Perhaps they talked down to you because they believed you weren’t quite as knowledgeable as they were on the subject. Worse, as they continued their lecture, it may have become obvious they believed you knew nothing on the subject. As it continued, you might have bristled--the tone of the conversation made you feel like they were calling you ignorant.

 

If a woman knows cars and a car salesman tries to pull the wool over her eyes, she’s likely to tell him off. If a mother gets lectured about childbirth by a single man because the guy read a book on it, she’s probably going to give him a piece of her mind. No one enjoys being told how things work by someone that has never experienced what we have experienced. Nor do we like being talked down to. We might put up with false assumptions for a little bit, but if the lecture continues on, we’re likely going to speak up and set matters straight.

 

Women call this mansplaining, or a funnier term, correctile dysfunction. The practice is patronizing, even condescending. When women do something similar to men, men call it womansplaining or femsplaining. In either case, one party is saying to the other party that they have superior knowledge of a subject, and that the one of the opposite sex that they're explaining it to has inferior knowledge. They presume they know more, and presumptuousness is not a becoming look. Especially if you have a PhD in childbirth by right of bringing seven children into this world, and the single man does not.

Writers can unknowingly do the same thing. They may assume their readers know nothing of the subject they are writing about, and so they go into great detail writersplaining to their readers. (I do believe I just coined a new word.) Perhaps they are writing a diver story, and although they've never been on a dive, they've just done all the research, and they're going to work all that information into their novel for your benefit.

       

This often drops in the form of infodumps (or worse, What About Bobs) because the writer believes you don't know this information and they need to fill you in. Perhaps you do need the information, perhaps you don't, but nobody likes to be lectured as if they're an ignoramus. Worse, the writer could be giving all these textbook details to someone like me, a diver that received his PADI certification on the island of Cozumel, that's been on shark dives in the Bahamas, cavern dives in the Yucatan, wreck dives in the British Virgin Islands, and spearfishing with buddies miles off the California and Oregon coast. The more the writer drops in their textbook knowledge, the more likely I'll recognize they've never been diving in their life. It won't take long for me to get annoyed by the writersplaining, because I'm going to feel talked down to. Why?

       

Because the writer failed to recognize that they'll have readers that know more about their subject than they do.

      

I opened with a snippet of my horse history, and here's the reason. If you're writing a Western or a weird Western or an epic fantasy with knights on horses or a Montana romance with lots of riding and you've never been on a horse, I'm going to spot you as a greenhorn from a mile off. Can't be helped. Riders know other riders, just as sure as they can recognize someone trying to get up in the saddle for the first time. No amount of book research will be able to hide inexperience. There are telltales that will give you away. Sorry.

       

This will always be the case. There's always a bigger fish. There's always someone that knows more than we do. We should assume this, even if we do have expert knowledge on a subject. Likewise, there will be readers that have little to no knowledge on that subject, and they will need some information from the writer to understand important plot points. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. What's a writer to do?…

 

Moon teaches the award-winning Super Secrets of Writing Workshops and is the author of The Illustrated Super Secrets of Writing and the runaway bestseller, How To Write a Howling Good Story. He invites you to join his free Wulf Pack Club at www.TheSuperSecrets.com

“The audience will buy whatever is put on the tube. I think the current year in television shows that. You put dogs defecating on television and you’ll get forty million people watching it.”

 - Ben Bova

 

       Way back in 1976, Tangent was able to interview Ben Bova over a series of meetings. Although Ben hadn't yet rocketed to one of the most iconic names in science fiction, he was gaining traction and winning awards and doing all the things every writer aspires to. These interviews were condensed and preserved by Tangent Online and can be read by clicking here.

Listen on:

 

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