Hart & Boot & Other Stories by Pratt Tim

Author:Pratt, Tim [Pratt, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: fantasy, award winners, stories, SF, science fiction
Published: 2010-07-23T04:00:00+00:00

Komodo

The trouble began when I met my new lover for the month. I bumped into him at the little Chinese grocery around the corner from my building. He was an attractive young man with some watered-down Asian ancestry in his features, buying ox blood and chicken feet. (I was buying lo mein and pork buns, but I have a high tolerance for people with stranger tastes than mine.) We got to the register at the same time and he gestured that I should go first, the sort of casual chivalry that I appreciate, as long as there’s no hint of condescension. Then he offered to walk me to my car, this being a dangerous neighborhood for a woman out walking by herself. “It’s my neighborhood,” I said, “and I don’t own a car, but you can walk me a couple of blocks if you want.” We chatted as we went. His name was Kasan, and he was a personal trainer and lifeguard at a local gym. He wasn’t a big guy, but he was wiry, and I could believe he was a swimmer. He seemed a bit awkward in conversation, as if he didn’t speak to people much, and I wondered if he’d been scrawny and unpopular earlier in life, and gotten into physical stuff to help his self-esteem.

I told him one of my standard half-truths, that I’d made a lot of money day-trading a few years ago and that I was spending most of my time now reading and making art for my own amusement. My true ambitions are rather different, but I could hardly tell a stranger that my goal in life is to rack up a mostly positive karmic balance and eventually make a bid for immortality.

We stopped at the front steps of my building, a weathered old townhouse that had been divided into flats. I glanced skyward, though I knew full well what the moon had to say. It was dark of the moon tonight, a good time for new beginnings, as any enterprise undertaken tonight would only grow in the following weeks as the moon waxed. I hadn’t cultivated a new lover in many months—the last one had fulfilled all my wishes and, as he’d requested, was now living happily at the bottom of a local river, slowly decaying into the bottom-mud and learning the languages of fish and pollution. In another hundred years or so, if the river didn’t dry up entirely, he might become a minor river god. Kasan had appeared just in time. I had certain things to accomplish over the course of the next month, and the energy that came with a new lover could serve well to fuel those endeavors.

“Want to come upstairs for a while, Kasan?” I asked. I’m beautiful. I’m desirable. I know how to sense when a potential partner is interested. I can say these things with no particular pride, because such powers require relatively small magics to achieve. People seldom say no to me. I never

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.