Following my announcement at the end of August, I’m very pleased to share that “The Shift” has been published in Issue 41 (Autumn 2021) of The Colored Lens. You can read the first few paragraphs of my story below before rushing over to buy your copy of the issue. But first, here are all the stories you’ll be getting for your money:
- “The Shift” by Karl El-Koura
- “Raindrops in Indra’s Net” by Dawn Vogel
- “The Cost of Magic” by Lynn Rushlau
- “Colic in the Mourning-Baby” by Lisa Schoenberg
- “The Ghosts of Everest” by Hayley Stone
- “The Pilot’s Wife” by Mallory Hobson
- “Across the Elsippi” by KT Workman
- “Hypotheses Concerning the Existence of Other Humans” by P.G. Streeter
- “You Make Your Own Luck” by Margery Bayne
- “The Lady of Time” by Elizabeth Guilt
The Shift
by Karl El-Koura
On the drive home after dinner out with his family, Jesse Sonat reflected that the hobby–obsession, his wife said–of the Jesse Sonat of this world was one of the best he’d encountered: buying rusted classic cars at auction, fixing them up, and selling them at a significant profit after enjoying them himself for a while. He drove the beautifully-restored ’66 Porsche Leverett under the moonlit sky, his wife in the passenger bucket seat, head resting on her arm as her reddish-brown hair waved in the wind from the open window, their daughter in the back seat singing along to the Raffi songs incongruously playing out of the booming bass speakers of this mechanical wonder.
He drove slowly, given the road conditions, but infuriating the pick-up truck that repeatedly sped up to within kissing distance of his bumper before backing off again.
Staring in the rearview, he began to say something to Leslie about the truck, when the tires slipped out from under his control, the car spun, and the headlights of the F-150 made him shield his eyes reflexively just before the two cars slammed into each other.
He tried to scream out—No! Not with them!—but he’d already slipped away from that world.
Read “The Shift” in Issue 41 of The Colored Lens.
