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Featured Short Story
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"First
Communions" in
Dark Faith anthology
(March/2010) |
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After, the blood stains
remained on the driveway for years. Two lopsided blotches joined in the
middle that, depending on who said, looked like big butterfly wings or the
head of a mouse or two mushroom clouds exploding or maybe someone’s balls.
They never really looked like a big misshapen heart. And as the stains
grew smaller and fainter over time, you had to really imagine the mouse or
balls or heart to really see them anymore. Or, even to see the stains.
They’d been darker, of course, when it first happened, on the newly soaked
concrete. When you could still see the smallest drops frozen in orbit just
outside the two main spheres. When everyone, everyone, took turns riding
bikes or walking the dog past the West’s house for another quick look to
see where some girl had killed herself.
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Although the horror genre
naturally lends itself to up close and personal examination of good and
very nasty evil, little writing in that genre is faith inflected. This
anthology addresses that gap. — Publishers Weekly
“Faith. Light and dark.
Terrible beauty and mind-shattering horror. It’s all here, in what’s sure
to be one of the year’s best anthologies.” —Shroud Magazine
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|
| .Geoffrey
Girard |
Also Available...
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"What
You Know" in
Courting Morpheus anthology
(Jan/2010) |
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It might have stopped with the lists they’d
made.
But, she’d only glanced at them. Had they
filled the page? Kept within the lines? Had Tess Barber put down anything
at all? Was Brendon McCarty’s writing still hopelessly illegible? She
hadn’t really looked at what they’d really put down.
She pressed back deeper into the kitchen’s shadows, body trembling. Buster
barked again somewhere outside, but the dog’s voice sounded empty and
distant. Like a ghost dog. She eyed the counter above and thought again of
grabbing one of the many knives there, one of the really big ones. |
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|
| .Geoffrey
Girard |
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"Collecting
James" in
Murky Depths
Issue #8 (may/2009) |
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Two dozen seemingly identical chips rested
atop small black stands, displayed on the shelves like treasure. James
reached into the wide rosewood cabinet to inspect one of the pieces. It
was the size of a thick poker chip. An almost perfect circle of bone. He took it off its stand and ran his fingers along the edge. Felt where
the chip had been carefully, tenderly smoothed. He clutched it tightly,
and suddenly heard the faint sound of strings. An abrupt rush of violins.
A growing rhythm that quickly raced through his entire body. He heard
notes, chord voicings moving...
"A
dark and emotive story... The story's three characters were all disturbing
in their own ways and made this a starkly potent piece." (SF Crowsnest) "A
well written little chiller." (SFRevu) |
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|
| .Geoffrey
Girard |
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"Translatio" in
the anthology Gratia Placenti |
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It hung in the grey sunless sky like an
enormous black balloon, bloated and dull, with a dozen rutted tendrils
dangling loosely just beneath. Had Keller not been looking for one, he
probably would have missed it completely. It would have become only
another dark cloud or treetop lurking at the far corner of his eye.
Every city had them by now. Hundreds. Some no bigger than a minivan.
Others, he’d heard, were as large as stadiums. The creatures hovered in
one spot for hours, days sometimes, drifting almost imperceptibly on some
terrible unseen current. As if they were only sleeping. Watching. Waiting.
Every so often, they “woke” and someone was killed.
"A twisted tale of servitude that starts
dark and dives, without hesitation, for darker. Oppressively dark and
daringly delivered, "Translatio" is likely to leave readers wondering
if this anthology might be more than they can handle." (Dark
Scribe Magazine)
"A post-apocalyptic tale of mood, despair and purpose. A
gripping tale..." (FearZone)
"...very effective, dark and
terrifying." (Horror World) |
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|
| .Geoffrey
Girard |
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"The
Twelve Year Bog" in The Rocking Chair Reader: Family Gatherings |
This bog was smaller than
the others, not much more than a dozen acres, but dense with the fattest
and tastiest blueberries I’d ever picked. It was framed awkwardly in the
tall dark trees of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, which surrounded the
bushes on all sides and cast a mixture of wraithlike shadows and radiant
sunlight over the deep-set field. Its boundaries were uneven and crooked,
the dams built many years before.
My fingers were already stained
blue in berry wax, collecting a hundred pounds a day. My grandfather,
who’d worked the same fields for sixty years, watched us work and helped
where he could. Though, he often just played his guitar. We slept on the
porch each night with half a dozen other cousins. We ate our aunts’
various deep-dish cobblers and we all played penny poker until the first
whippoorwill’s hoot. I was thirteen. |
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|
| .Geoffrey
Girard |
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"Dark Harvest"
in
Writers of the Future XIX |
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No one knew what it was at first, the black thing lying in Tomas Walker’s
barley field, and guesses and opinion collected for three days before
anyone even dared touch it. On that third day, surrounded by hushed words
of both encouragement and warning, Leo Barth carefully used his longest
walking stick to roll the thing to its side so they could all get a better
look. Then, though none of them had ever seen one before, they somehow
knew exactly what it was. A crow-black hooded cloak hid most of the long body, its legs and arms
limp and twisted in peculiar directions, broken, looking just as if one of
the girls had dropped her cloth moppet....
( Geoffrey Girard )
"The 19th installment contains more top-notch stories than last
year's volume and is likely to satisfy science fiction and fantasy
aficionados looking for fresh ideas and new twists on old conventions.
Should be required reading for aspiring sci-fi and fantasy
writers." (Publishers Weekly)
"Geoffrey Girard brings us a story about what
happens when you find your worst nightmare dying in a field, and it
becomes a tourist attraction. Excellent writing, and a wonderful story." (Amazon.com)
|
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|
| Geoffrey
Girard |
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"Universal
Adaptor" in Aoife's Kiss magazine (Issue
21) |
“Please don’t,” Paul said, then treated 45-23b with another thousand
directed beams of hyper-radiation. The man’s mind punched back at it,
betrayed and angry, and Paul ended up taking some of the jolt himself. The
new pods they shared didn’t burn like the older models, but the rest was
still there. A flash of loss, despair and defeat. Floating, hollow. Paul
was only getting a taste of what his patient got, and it was terrible. But
he didn’t try shaking it off because he knew that only time could make it
go away and that it hurt like hell to rush the process. He relaxed and
simply let the computer-driven despair settle in. Then he reminded himself
it was just part of the job.
( Geoffrey Girard )
Review: "A story that could have gone
to a much darker place, but the writer knew enough not to underestimate
his audience. Just the hint at how dark it can go can be enough to send
shivers of fear up your spine." (PuttPutt
Productions) |
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|
| .Geoffrey
Girard |
|
"Wizards'
Encore"
reprinted
in the anthology PRIME
CODEX
[
Originally appeared in Beyond Centauri
magazine (4/2005)
] |
|
After
he’d defeated their kingdom, the French wizard came to speak to Kabir’s
father. The Frenchman wore a
burnous, the traditional desert robe dark and
long, a camel’s-hair cord wrapped tight around his fat and large
forehead. He had dead, white skin, his face bare and corpselike with hard
sharp eyes of a stone, blue as the sky, gazing lewdly about the tent from
under his robe’s hood. Djenoum,
Kabir thought again. A demon.
"Prime Codex can stand next to
any 'Best of' in the field. Full of fresh thinking, innovative writing,
and outbreaks of staggering beauty, Prime Codex should be at the
top of your to-be-read pile." (Jay Lake, Winner of the 2004 John W.
Campbell Award)
|
[ click
to order ]
|
| .Geoffrey
Girard |
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"H.
E. Double Hockey Stick" in the anthology Damned
Nation |
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Everyone on the team hated the twins. And not just the other players. Anyone who had anything even remotely to do with the Red Raiders hated them too. The coaches, all of the parents, refs, the kids they played against, the Zamboni guy, even the little old grandma who volunteered in the rink’s snack shop. The two boys were frail, pink-faced halfwits. Even for ten-year-olds who’d clearly never played hockey before, they stunk at everything from stick handling to shooting and, if possible, skated even worse. They didn’t know the rules or pay attention during practice. They couldn’t remember plays or formations. They didn’t even lace their stupid skates right. To make matters worse, Cory also suspected they were both demons straight from the pits of hell.
( Geoffrey Girard )
"Geoffrey Girard is my favorite! Hilarious and
horrific. I need to read more of this guy's stuff." (Shocklines.com) |
|
| .Geoffrey
Girard |
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"Where
the Shadow Ended" in The Willows magazine (September
'07)
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Tom was familiar to the
darkness, an adopted son. He woke to it each morning and scurried over its
dim empty streets, then immediately climbed back into it again to work in
pitch black flues for hours. Wedged in endless shadow, reaching tiny hands
into the dark unknown to scrape clean the insides of London’s chimneys.
His skin, hair and clothes were soot-dyed and black. It was rumored to be
bad luck to step on a chimney sweep’s shadow, and Tom supposed that was
because it was never really clear where the shadow ended and the boy
began. |
|
|
.Geoffrey Girard |
Forthcoming...
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"For
Restful Death I Cry" in
Dark Futures anthology
(April/2010) |
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A four-story C3 still
inhabited by dozens of the undead. You’ve wandered each floor to make a
quick head count, double checked their number before hauling in any
equipment. Enough cloth to wrap all the bodies, canisters for the old fuel
cells. Charges and nitroglycerin for the building. Other teams have
already been through to strip out the copper wire, op fibers, and any
viraglass. Now it’s your turn. In two weeks, the crushers will roll in to
recycle whatever worthwhile concrete and timber remain above, then flatten
the rest to finish burying the recently departed. Not many here. One
hundred and six. You’ve taken a couple days. There’s no real rush. They’ve
been here some three hundred years... |
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click
to pre-order ]
|
| .Geoffrey
Girard |
© GeoffreyGirard.com
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