New Story at Fantasy Faction
I have a new story, entitled “Unbroken Lines”, posted at the website Fantasy Faction, as part of their October Writing Challenge. You can read (and vote) for it there: http://fantasy-faction.com/forum/writers-corner/october-writing-challenge/
A quick excerpt:
In our neighborhood, all the houses were alike; their complex geometry, indistinguishable. But mine was the most splendid of the identical houses, because I framed it with an impeccable lawn. Blades of grass stood in unbroken lines: crew-cut, uniform, regimental green. The lawn was the perfect complement to the red brick of the house itself, and behind that, the vast blue emptiness of sky.
But such a spectacle is paid for in vigilance. I walked the lawn every evening, being careful to vary my path so as not to flatten the zoysia. I suffered no weed to survive the night; I dug out their roots with a thin-bladed knife. My neighbors, dwelling in their own identical houses, let crabgrass spoil their property and lives.
The first sign was so small. During my patrol, I found a sapling, almost a foot tall, which had not been there the night before. I am aware of what occurs on my lawn above all other pieces of land in this world. I know it better than my own face in the mirror. Had the sapling instead been a tendril of kudzu, the stalk of a sunflower, even the grasping face of a dandelion, I could have understood its sudden appearance. But a sapling, no matter how small, does not sprout over night. I dug up the sapling and worried about its roots; how far could they have spread in a day?
No singing trees this time, but still plenty of trees.
