An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
by Daniel and Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Allasso, Vol. 3: Storge, April 2014
Topher checked his watch and peeked out around the dusky red stage curtain. There was a full house in the bar tonight. If he played them right he could get all the tips he needed, and tonight could be the greatest night of his life. Continue reading “A Real Stand-Up Guy”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Sorcerous Signals, February 2014
The carousel turned, and Artie watched the ponies go by. He shifted his weight as he sat on the green, metal frame bench. It was one of many around the edges of the giant, window-walled room that housed the carousel. Artie was beginning to think that he should upgrade the benches. These ones looked nice, but they weren’t easy on an old man’s back. Continue reading “The Carousel of Spirits”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published by Penn Cove Literary Arts Award, June 2013
The little boy pressed his nose up against the minivan window, twisting himself up under his seatbelt. He strained his one eye, trying to peer all the way across the golden field littered with shiny white unicorns, gamboling and playing, their manes rippling in the wind. Danny was sure that if his parents would just let him roll down the window so he could stick his head out, he’d be able to make out a moose in the forest edge beyond. Instead, all he could see was stupid unicorns. Continue reading “Cyclops on Safari”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Allasso, Volume 2: Saudade, April 2012
Heavy with kittens, Magtwilla made a choice. She’d been a housecat before, and she’d spent time being feral. Although she disliked the restrictive interference of the clothed primates, she had to admit that their houses with reliable food and warmth would be the better environment for a litter of kittens. So, Magtwilla selected a nice house and set about the work of charming the clothed primate who lived there. In mere days, the primate took her in, strapped an offensively pink collar around her throat, and took to calling her Jenny. Todd was laughably easy to manipulate with a simple purr. Magtwilla felt she’d done well by her unborn kittens. Continue reading “Magtwilla and the Mouse”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Issue No. 15, May 2014
The hospital lights flash in my eyes, and a man wearing blue scrubs injects me with a needle. I can’t feel my body anymore, and all I can see is his blue-clothed back and the nervous faces of my owners, Geoff and Bree, looking down at me. I can see them holding my paws, reaching to pat my ears, but all the sensations are distant.
by Mary E. Lowd
A Deep Sky Anchor Original, March 2016
The dance was over, like most high school dances, around eleven. The music stopped, and amid barks and yips of outrage, the lights came on. Without the blasting music and strobing lights, the crowd dissolved into a mass of individual dogs standing around awkwardly. Katasha’s ears flattened, and she drifted away from the bandstand, suddenly feeling weird as the only cat in the audience. The band playing tonight, Dog-Step, didn’t exactly have a lot of feline fans. Continue reading “High School Dogs”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Luna Station Quarterly, Issue 020, December 2014
It was Avian Night at the All Alien Cafe. The avian population of Crossroads Station wasn’t large, but they were vocal and social. The double winged Eechies and the puff-feathered Rennten could always be counted on to attend, since they’d evolved as colony dwellers. However, occasionally, even a traditionally solitary, long-legged Ululu would show up and regale the crowd with stories of how his people had built high-pressure nests inside all the gas giants in a thirty light-year radius of Crossroads Station before humans even noticed them. Continue reading “The Little Red Avian Alien”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Tails of a Clockwork World: A Rainfurrest Anthology, September 2012
Mice tell a myth of fearsome creatures with scaly talons, massively muscled bodies, and sharp, hooked beaks. Death from the sky, instant death, for any mouse foolish enough to be above ground when these creatures come hunting.
The name of the myth is owl, and few mice see one and live to tell the tale. Owls are creatures of shadow — both the shadows of trees in a darkening forest and the shadows of misremembered tales retold by forgetful minds. Continue reading “One Night in Nocturnia”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Dancing in the Moonlight: Rainfurrest 2013 Charity Anthology, September 2013
The eggs never hatched. Henrietta and all her coop-mates laid eggs every day, and every day the Coopmaster came and took the eggs away. No baby chicks. Henrietta had so much love in her feathered breast and no one to spend it on.
Only nine inches below the slatted floor of the coop, a cold and hungry litter of fox kits waited for their mother to return. One by one, the kits closed their eyes and fell into a patient sleep. Their breathing slowed. Their hearts slowed too. Still, the mother did not return. Continue reading “Fox in the Hen House”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Stories of Camp RainFurrest, September 2011
Any human in the room would have seen an oversized koala bear, a bushy red-wolf, a long-tailed, green lizard, and a large blue fish wearing a diving helmet, floating bizarrely above his barstool. But there were no humans in the room. It was the All Alien Cafe on the interstellar meeting point known as Crossroads Station. Continue reading “Where the Heart Is”