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Hello, and welcome to the first episode
of Knights and Nebulas, a show where I read you Science Fiction and Fantasy
flash fiction
by Jeffrey Austin Ellis.
Jeff is a reader, writer, gamer,
nerd...a wanna be tennis enthusiast, but
he doesn't know how to do physical things because
they are strange...and foreign to him.
He is also, even more importantly, uh, me. He's me.
I'm Jeffrey Austin Ellis and I promise you
this will be the end of referring to myself in the third person
for the...just the rest of
my life. Never again.
Yeah, so this is my show
and I'm going to be reading new stories that I write
every two weeks, so
twice a month, on the first and on the
on the 15th...
But, uh, there's like another hand...because that's...
how math works...Um...
So yeah, so let's move on to, um
our first story, which is called Wolves,
Or Worse Than Wolves. It's not
traditional fantasy fair, which a lot of
the other stories you're going to see on the show will be, but
it's kind of, I don't know, it's kind of an origin story for myself
and for people who like Fantasy
and read Fantasy and more importantly people who write Fantasy.
It's, um, yeah it's about
a little kid with way too active imagination
trying to take the trash out at night.
Which is scary.
and I still don't like doing it and sometimes
make my roommates do it for me...I swear I'm a grown *** man.
Um, but yeah, so this will be
Wolves, Or Worse Than Wolves. He was small
and afraid and the dark was terribly massive.
It stretched on before him
past the porch light, past the porch, into what were empty fields in the day
and vacuous, abyssal pits, on that
cloudy night. The trash bag
in his hand was stretching
and the thin plastic was ripping.
He knew that if he did not run to the trash can
now, the bag would rip open. He knew that
if he did not run to the trash can now, the night
would consume him. Outside of the
porch light, down the wooden steps to the yard, things moved
in the black. Wolves, or worse than wolves
paced the boundaries of the light with lolling
tongues, waiting for him to gather his courage.
"Be brave," he thought they said,
"Come into the dark. We are only your imagination and we cannot harm you.
Be brave. Be brave.
Be brave." But he was not brave and so he stared into the dark
with the trash bag drooping in his hand unable
to move. If the bag ripped,
his mother would be very angry with him
and it would rip soon if he did not run into that hungry night.
He could see it,
of course. The trash can. It
sat only a few feet away from the porch, tinted ever so softly blue
by what little starlight eased through the clouds that night.
But a few feet
were many, when they were filled with wolves,
or worse than wolves. A small hole
appeared in the neck of the trash bag
and he knew that his time was up.
He sucked in a deep breath
and took a single step away from the light.
Something snapped at him and it made no sound
was gone as soon as it had come.
"Be brave," someone said
and he thought it might have been himself.
He closed his eyes and took another
step. They came for him then,
at the edge of the light, only in his imagination they were no longer bound by
any rules.
They came from the fully lit porch behind him. They came swooping out of the black
sky.
They crawled up from the somber place beneath the porch.
They came for him and he was too proud to scream.
Big boys aren't afraid of the dark, he thought,
but he was running and stuffing the trash bag into the receptacle before he
could think how silly he must look.
He swung through the open sliding glass door
into the house and slid shut
The door. He did not look
into the the dark of the night.
Behind him, his mother said
"Can you take the recycling out too?" and set another bag at
his feet. He eyes
widened. His heart pounded
his chest. Outside
the wolves, or worse than wolves, laughed
at him. They laughed and howled
and rolled across the lawn and jumped and
snapped their teeth at the air.
His lips became a thin line
and he turned to his mother with a grim determination
in his eyes. "Yeah, I guess,"
he said, and took another
step, once more,
into their domain.
So that's it. That was Wolves, Or Worse Than Wolves.
It's one of my favorite stories that I've written. I'm really proud of it.
And that's why I wanted to start the show with it,
but also because it's, it's
a lot about who I was a kid and has become
a lot about who I am today, which is someone who
has way too much of an imagination and lets it get away from him sometimes.
But yeah, I really really hope you liked it
and, if you did like it, please, please, please subscribe,
and like the video, and,
you know, do do anything you can
to show your support. Most importantly would be sharing this link,
just everywhere: on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr,
wherever you can, just to help me spread the word.
That would be awesome and I would really, really, appreciate it.
Yeah, so, uh,
thats, that's the first episode and
I will see you guys and gals again
probably on the 15th. On the 15th.
No more probably's I guess, because yeah
this is the start of a real thing
and I really hope you stick with me through it all.
Thank you.