Forever Magazine Issue 97 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magazine, science fiction, Science Fiction - Short Stories, science fiction magazine, short fiction, short stories
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2023-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, May/June 2021.

Patriotic Canadians Will Not Hoard Food!

Madeline Ashby

It was just after three in the afternoon on the day before Halloween when the man from Toronto showed up for the third time.

“Again?” Dionisia asked. “Seriously?”

Erin chewed some of the skin flaking away from her lower lip. A dry fall was better for the wheat, but it was murder on the skin. Erin watched the man jump down out of his rented black truck. He was trying to dress like a local, this time: all-season boots, jeans, a collared shirt under some kind of tactical outdoor jacket that seemingly couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be green or gray. She watched him amble up the drive, boots crunching in the gravel, as he squinted at all the pumpkins dotting the path. Most of them had already been carved, and he was clearly trying to identify some of the faces.

“He probably thinks the third time’s a charm,” Erin said.

“Is it?” Dionisia asked.

Erin twisted the linen tea towel in her hands into a rope and playfully snapped Dionisia with it. “Fuck off. Of course not. I don’t even know why he keeps showing up.”

Dionisia arched her pierced eyebrow. “Oh, you don’t, eh? Well, I do.”

Erin rolled her eyes. “You say that about everyone.”

“You’re the last single woman under forty in Dowling who doesn’t already have children of her own.”

“So I’m a withered old crone, is what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying you live in a house with seven bedrooms and you could be filling them up.”

“But then where would you and Ruthie live?”

Erin always asked this question whenever this conversation came up. But this time, Dionisia had an answer: “We’d take the place over the garage! There’s a whole finished apartment up there that you could be renting!”

Erin held up a finger. “This is because I’ve made molletes too often this week, isn’t it?”

“Yes. You’re going to get scurvy.”

“Beans and cheese on toast is a perfectly reasonable—”

The doorbell rang. Erin sighed deeply. She rolled her head back and closed her eyes. Her neck crunched audibly. She wasn’t sure if the tension in her tendons was due to the man outside, or the offer he kept making, or how much harder it became to refuse each time. Whatever it was, it was playing hell with her jaw. “If we ignore him, do you think he’ll go away?”

“Did he go away the other two times?”

The doorbell rang again. Erin growled in the back of her throat, and made for the door. Callum Carruthers—he sounded like a bad guy on an old Hollywood Sunday night prestige series, like Don Draper or Walter White—stood on the screen porch with his finger hovering over the button.

“Hi, Miss Landry, I’m here to—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Erin muttered. She pushed out the front door and onto the screen porch. There were still a couple of pumpkins out there in need of carving, and she took one of the Muskoka chairs and hauled a pumpkin into her lap.

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