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    Goddesses, Sleep with the Snowmen, and Other Fantasies
    Goddesses, Sleep with the Snowmen, and Other Fantasies
    Goddesses, Sleep with the Snowmen, and Other Fantasies
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Goddesses, Sleep with the Snowmen, and Other Fantasies

    By William Mangieri

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    About this ebook

    A collection of ten short speculative fictions by William Mangieri, in which we learn some life lessons:
    What constitutes a true waste of time
    Sentience is in the eye of the beholder
    Things aren’t always where they should be
    Perception is reality
    What to expect if you were to talk to God
    Don’t be too eager to perform labors proffered by goddesses
    No crime is victimless
    A love that lasts forever may not be a good thing
    Be good, or the jingle bells may toll for thee
    The voices in your head can be real

    Includes the short stories:

    There’s No Present Like the Time
    Peter and Vanessa have different ideas. While on a rare vacation, Peter chances to meet a mysterious woman who brings these differences to a head.

    Cellfishness
    See Miss Ribo try to keep her students from getting the wrong ideas in biology class.

    Out of Place
    Sue’s her world is changing; an uncomfortable situation for someone who expects everything to stay where it belongs. Who knows where it will all end up?

    All the News That’s Fit for You
    Where your point of view dictates your reality.

    Interview with the Blue Neon God
    A novice reporter is sent after a story that could be a career-maker - or something more.

    Goddesses
    A young man lands a seemingly perfect job serving a beach full of scantily clad women who are more than they appear.

    Victimless
    A murderer's defense team proposes a novel approach to making crime truly victimless.

    Stalking Rebecca
    A reluctant date hears a tale from a no-longer-secret admirer explaining her fate.

    Sleep with the Snowmen
    A petty criminal crosses the wrong fat man, and is offered the opportunity to change his path

    The Voices
    Billy Thompson knows the voices are real, even if they are just in his head. Or are they?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Mangieri
    Release dateNov 30, 2018
    ISBN9780463281147
    Goddesses, Sleep with the Snowmen, and Other Fantasies
    Author

    William Mangieri

    William Mangieri is a karaoke junkie, former theater student, and recovered wargamer who spends as much time wondering "what if?" as "why not?". He writes from Texas, where he and his family live at the mercy of the ghost of a nine-pound westie.William writes mostly speculative fiction (that’s science fiction, fantasy and horror), although he also has a detective series with a soft sci-fi element (Detective Jimmy Delaney.) He completed writing his first novel (Swordsmaster) in 2019; prior to this, he has honed his skills on short fiction. He has been published in Daily Science Fiction and The Anarchist, and six of his stories have earned Honorable Mentions in the Writers of the Future contest.

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      Book preview

      Goddesses, Sleep with the Snowmen, and Other Fantasies - William Mangieri

      Goddesses, Sleep with the Snowmen,

      and Other Fantasies

      A collection of ten short, speculative fictions

      by William Mangieri

      Copyright 2018 by William Mangieri

      Smashwords Edition

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Stories contained in this collection are copyrighted by the author:

      All the News That's Fit for You, Cellfishness, Goddesses, Out of Place: Copyright 2016

      Interview with the Blue Neon God, Sleep with the Snowmen, Stalking Rebecca,

      There's No Present Like the Time, Victimless, The Voices: Copyright 2017

      Table of Contents

      There’s No Present Like the Time

      Cellfishness

      Out of Place

      All the News That’s Fit for You

      Interview with the Blue Neon God

      Goddesses

      Victimless

      Stalking Rebecca

      Sleep with the Snowmen

      The Voices

      Origins

      About the Author

      There’s No Present Like the Time

      Peter Ptarmigan stopped partway up the narrow stone stairs and sat down so he could catch his breath. He pulled his handkerchief from the breast pocket of his tweed suit for the umpteenth time and staved off the sweat that was dripping down his forehead.

      Unbelievable, he muttered.

      Eureka Springs was wonderful for scenery, if you didn’t have to navigate the steep, twisting, rock-paved streets and paths for too long. He looked down the way he had come, then up behind him where he had started. He’d been all down and up these stairs, what – seven times? Maybe if he was in better shape. He didn’t get a lot of activity sitting around coding; he knew a few guys who started exercising in their mid-forties; he always thought it was just midlife crisis rearing its head. Maybe it was his turn to start.

      The town was also great for the kind of artsy-crafty shops Vanessa loved - when you could find them. Vanessa was looking at kaleidoscopes in a place up the hill when he snuck away from her to look for this damn shop – this Morceaux de Temps that was eluding him. Surely Vanessa, even with her lack of awareness of time, should have been wondering where he was by now.

      He would have bought her twenty-fifth anniversary gift before their vacation started, but he’d been so behind at work that there had never been time. The waitress at the café he’d talked to while he was waiting for Vanessa to show had said it would be a little tricky to find the shop, but come on - how could he have missed it? He knew he was on the right stairs, and there were only six side passages to explore; he had checked each diligently, yet he continued to come up empty.

      I don’t have time for this, he grumbled.

      Peter pocketed his handkerchief, and then stood and began climbing back up to the top to rejoin Vanessa when he saw it – a seventh gap in the stair wall that he swore hadn’t been there the other six times he had come up the stairs. And there, at the end of the landing - Morceaux de Temps.

      I was too worn out to see it; I really do need to start working out, Peter muttered to himself, and then snorted Right! Like I have the time to exercise.

      He reached the end of the row and looked into the shop through the big plate glass window. There were clocks everywhere – on the walls, in display cases, on tables. There were even several free-standing grandfather clocks. There was nothing that reflected modern styles – it all looked antique – the flavor he was looking for, although not the size. What he wanted was probably in the cases he saw near the back of the shop.

      Peter moved to the glass-paneled door and was greeted with a sign hanging over the knob that read:

      GONE TO LUNCH – BACK SHORTLY

      This was another of the problems he had with this town – it was so lackadaisical that you could never be sure whether a shop would be open when it was supposed to be. Vanessa laughed when he bridled at this; for her, it was part of Eureka Springs’ charm and one of the biggest reasons she insisted on vacationing here. She even talked about wanting to retire in this town, but he wasn’t sure he could stand it.

      Try to relax, Peter, she would say with a smile. This place is designed to stop time; you should go with it.

      He supposed he could at least try that while they were on vacation – if she would only reciprocate by taking time seriously when they got back home. It seemed highly unlikely, but he was willing to give it a try – just not right now.

      He shook the door handle in frustration, and he was rewarded when the door popped open.

      Hello? Anyone here? he called, and when no one answered, Probably still out to lunch.

      Peter entered the shop and was surrounded by ticking – time marching along in mechanical resonance on multiple pieces. He was pleased to see that all the clocks were in sync – they weren’t running at odds with each other like you would see in most shops. It would have comforted him if it didn’t also remind him how long he’d been searching, and how little time he had.

      He leaned over the case at the back of the store and admired the watches. There were some nice, old style pocket watches, but he knew that those would wind up in Vanessa’s purse after the initial novelty wore off, and then she would go right back to ignoring the watch, along with the time it represented. No, he needed something she could wear, so it would be right there where she could feel and see it - a constant reminder.

      He moved over to the second case, where there were fairly modern looking wrist watches with their LED readouts. Peter had never cared for digital displays – it made time seem like it was jerking from one instant to the next, with none of the seconds or minutes truly connected to each other, instead of the inexorable, steady flow represented by the smooth sweep of hands in a traditional clock face.

      He looked in the third case, which held men’s traditional analogs, many designs that he would not mind having himself, but then this wasn’t about him. The fourth case was filled ladies’ watches, many of which would have appealed to Vanessa. There was a gold Etruscan design that he thought she might have cared for in her twenties, but her tastes had gone more Celtic or Renaissance since then, and it was their silver anniversary. He needed to find one that would appeal to her so strongly that she would pay more attention to it.

      You know it will not work, a gravelly-smooth voice said from behind the counter. The accent had an old-world feel – perhaps eastern European?

      Peter looked up from the case at the woman who had just spoken. She had waist-length, reddish-blonde hair that she wore tied back in a braid. The hair framed a smooth face of indeterminate age; Peter had never been good at judging this, but there was something about her that made him feel she was older than she looked. Maybe she’d had surgery to smooth things over, but those intense green-blue eyes were also at once wise and youthful.

      Her dress looked like it had been thrown together from a slew of diaphanous scarves, and as she turned and set her lunch bag on a shelf behind the counter, the colors seemed to change as the layers shifted back and forth over each other. It was interesting to watch – a bit too interesting, and Peter felt his face getting hot as he turned his attention back to the case.

      I’m sorry, I didn’t even realize you were there, he said.

      Hmmm, I do not hear that often. I wonder if I’m losing my charm, she

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