This is the first speculative fiction story I’ve really worked on to the finish. It’s not where it needs to be, and there’s something embarrassing about working on horror, but it’s time to exorcise it completely. I’ve been herding the little bits of it around for too long and while it more or less hangs together, it isn’t what I would call good. I need to get better at both the drafting and the herding, so I want to empty this out of queue entirely to allow myself to focus on finishing other drafting and herding projects that are stacking up behind it.

Fortune

By Andrew Hilmer

Our first offering to the god was a scavenger I caught digging through the recycling. He didn’t struggle much as my wife Jan and I dragged him down to the basement, but when I pulled the sheet off the living clay of the enormous head he screamed and fought. In the dim light of the lookout windows our god’s eyes opened wide, its lips parted and a flood of tentacles and chains with hooks flooded over its teeth to tear the offering from our grasp. The meal was pulled in, denim and shoes and stink and all. The god chewed and licked its lips clean with a glistening clay tongue. Its eyelids slapped when it blinked. Finally its jaws and lips rested in a slight smile and its eyes closed. Jan and I went upstairs.

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