Following up on my post from a few weeks ago, I’m happy to announce that Stupefying Stories #25 is now available for purchase. SS#25 includes my “The Wawa Stick,” along with the stories listed below.
I’m very pleased to see this story go out into the world, and to have Stupefying Stories return from a long hiatus. My congratulations to editor Bruce Bethke for his perseverance in launching this issue under very difficult circumstances (as he mentions in a post on the Stupefying Stories blog).
Contents:
- “If We Shadows” by Fred Coppersmith
- “Gob Pile” by Neva Bryan
- “Tin Lizzi” by J. L. Royce
- “A Limited View” by Gary Kloster
- “Two-Tone” by Elise Stephens
- “Cloudbreaker Above” by Brandon Nolta
- “Caliban’s Cameras” by Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- “There Is Another Sky” by Bo Balder
- “Something Came Through” by Michael Burnside
- “The Wawa Stick” by Karl El-Koura
And now a sneak peak at my story:
The Wawa Stick
by Karl El-Koura
“If you’re attacked by a yancee, set your wawa stick to its highest setting and fire, fire, fire! Attacked by a yancee and don’t have a wawa stick? Enjoy being yancee-food. That’s what you get for ignoring or failing to remember the first rule of exploring Banou—always carry a fully-charged wawa stick.”
—from
A Guide to the Safe Exploration of the Planet Banou
by E.L. Mysher
Jan didn’t have a wawa stick. When her husband’s goon dumped her on this miserable planet, he didn’t bother providing one.
“Enjoy being yancee-food,” he said as he pushed her out the back of the hover-truck. “Enjoy being yancee-food, you stupid” and then some choice words.
Jan was smart enough not to wait on the ground, at least. Despite Ms. Mysher’s pessimism, Jan was certain she could avoid the yancees by climbing one of the very tall trees in the small forest nearby.
Jan was wrong; halfway up she saw a yancee waiting for her on one of the thick branches extending from the top of the tree. She broke off a branch the size of her arm and approached. The yancee stared at her.
“A branch?” he said. At ten feet, the yancee stood twice her height; nevertheless, that was short for a yancee. Jan realized that this was probably a child. “You’re going to attack me with a branch?”
“This isn’t a branch,” Jan said; it was the first time since university that she’d spoken Yantook, but she managed to get the words out. “It’s a wawa stick.”
The yancee made a low-pitched rumbling sound, his species’ equivalent to a laugh. “I just saw you break it off the tree!”
“This? I’ve been carrying this with me all along.”
“It doesn’t even look like a wawa stick.” But the yancee wasn’t moving any closer, and he wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Doesn’t it? Whatever it looks like, I think you’ll find that it feels like a wawa stick.” She pointed the branch at him.
“Don’t!” the yancee screamed, but didn’t bother waiting to see if she’d comply. He dove through the leaves, as if into a swimming pool, and caught hold of a lower branch. Swinging from branch to branch, he made his way to the ground. Without looking back, he fled, arms swaying in panic above his head.
Jan sat on the thick branch at the top of the tree, her feet dangling below her. The large red sun was setting, the small yellow one was rising; she stared at the different colors as they swirled in the sky. She tried to think of how she could get off Banou, back to Earth, back into her husband’s presence, and accomplish then what she should’ve done the last time she saw him: end the miserable bastard’s miserable existence.
But her mind kept wandering, returning to the past, back to the point, almost a year ago now, when things had gone from bad to worse….
Keep reading by buying your copy of Issue 25 of Stupefying Stories.
