Description

Etherea Magazine #6

Etherea Magazine, January 2022. A collection of excellent speculative fiction, from authors around the globe.

Hear from Robert Lee Henry, author of The Return of the Grey, The High Woods Hunter, and The Unnatural Hand.

Enjoy the amazing artwork supplied by highly talented artist Dominik Mayer

Far From the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson is reviewed by Katie McIvor

THE STORIES:

From the table, the creature rumbled good-naturedly, “You know if it helps at all, I’ll pretend I can’t talk?” Shira felt like crying. No, she was crying. Raising a hand to her eyes, she felt the warm trickle of liquid sliding down her mud-stained cheeks. Where did this all go wrong? – The Price of Creation, by Jeffrey C. Sims

Old man Carlos chuckles at my reply and starts to make his way up the stairs to his room, one lumbering step at a time. I fan myself with a coaster to allay the Havanan heat and turn away. Poor codger’s been here forever. I only feel like I’ve been here forever. – Circular Thinking, by Helena McAuley

Little did the audience know that beneath the layers of white tulle and behind her willowy arms was a fierce dragon on the hunt. Neither for flesh nor blood but for gold to fill her trove. Perhaps she should have been a pirate searching for treasure across the seas but stealing from the dead and the lost was not nearly as thrilling as stealing from the rich… – The Waltz of the Thief and the Vampire, by Drew C. Jade

Sipping slowly, she let the ice-cold liquid slide down her raw throat. Screaming would do that to you. Flashes of blood splatter, dead eyes staring in accusation, and limbs splayed where bodies had been flung came and went in her mind… – A Curious Request, by Laurie Bell

Bloody tourists, they also mutter. But I’m not of a mind to travel hundreds of kilometres, and I’m darn well not a tourist. I’m a cryptozoologist, a journalist. I’ve 200k subscribers and a job to do… – On Assignment in Birdsville, QLD, by Emma Louise Gill

I’m an eight-litre, carbon-fibre racing car, rendered in neon vector graphics rotating around my low centre of gravity. Through the surrounding darkness, green neon light approaches accompanied by a howling—first barely audible—that intensifies until it turns into screeching guitars pushing through my audio circuit… – “”, by Martin Rohde

The red light flashed on the camera, but Quinton didn’t worry about wasting a few seconds. The show’s ratings had climbed into the stratosphere. For the first time in years, Reality TV was trailing badly. In addition, he felt great. The pills his doctor prescribed had him sleeping like a baby. Even the occasional rosacea flare-up didn’t wake him… – Layers, by Michael Simon

I squint up at her, but don’t talk back. Mom tells me not to talk to anyone about the trains. She holds me still and whispers, Just hush about those trains, Jamie! That imagination of yours gonna get you in big trouble… – Where the Train Goes, by K.G. Anderson

The death stench grossed Olaf out. As soon as he smelled the reek that came from behind the rusty door of apartment #1988, he was sure that was the place. – Invisible Bodies by Álex Souza

What would it be like, we’d asked ourselves, to swoop and gather as the rest of us grubbed away in the hull dirt, the marks of our labours forming dark tattoos beneath our nails? So often we had dreamed of being like them — free to fly… – Harvest Rain, by Jay Caselberg