Story Excerpts

The Iron Maiden
by Doug Allyn

A bell tinkled as Professor Brewer stepped into the dive shop. No one answered. There wasn’t a soul in sight, which was definitely odd. The equipment on display was—whoa! Very expensive. Diving masks in translucent colors, regulators, wet suits, complex electronic gadgets that—Brewer had no idea what most of this stuff was for.

Overhead, diving gear from earlier ages was on display. A gleaming brass helmet out of Jules Verne, canvas diving suits with Frankenstein boots. A sailing ship’s bowsprit dangled from the shop’s cathedral ceiling, scoured clean by the lake bed. From a wreck of the last century, perhaps? Or the one before that? READ MORE

 

A Woman in Miniature
by Carol Goodman

“Well, Hello Dolly!” Tony the bellhop whistled under his breath. “Look at what just blew into town!”

I looked up from the directory, suspecting that Tony, Broadway fan that he was, might be referring to the irrepressible matchmaker Dolly Levi in the latest revival of The Merchant of Yonkers, but instead I was just in time to watch a cloud of silver fox and violet tulle sail by as if a storm front had advanced into the lobby of the Plaza. She—if there really was a woman at the center of all that fur and fabric and static electricity—drifted into the elevator and turned a veiled face toward the lobby as if facing a firing squad before being lifted into her natural aerial element. My ears popped as if the pressure had dropped inside the information booth.  READ MORE