Fiction Friday (kinda-sorta) and an update on submissions for the site and contest...

First, Yours Truly is happy to inform one and all that we have been fairly inundated with submissions.

That's the good news.

The not-so-bad news is that the majority of submissions have been novel-length manuscripts, with several of these not following submissions guidelines.

So here they are once again:

Those interested in making a fiction submission to The Corners, please send:

• A manuscript not longer than 40 pages
• Double-spaced in Times New Roman 11 font
• IN A WORD DOCUMENT
• To: thecornersmag@gmail.com or to query@cddi.pl.
• Content should be focused on Central and Eastern Europe. May be literary, but detective, spy, thriller is preferred.
• Please note the purpose in the title.

Please note that we cannot take manuscripts longer than the above (and honetsly, 40 pages is already quite long).

After all, a SHORT STORY (which is preferred) can be one page. It can even be half that.

It, theoretically, could even run one paragraph.

Not that I am particularly lazy, but hey, less can be more. I will say that a couple of volunteer readers would prefer shorter manuscripts... and that just might weight into the decisions making progress. Your call.

That said, a couple of the novels received are intriguing. For this reason (and this reason only) we will also accept excerpts. Find a section of the novel (probably less than 10 pages) that you believe is going to "wow" us, and we'll have a look.

Please remember that 1) submission does not oblige The Corners to publish or pay for said work, and 2) we have already received a large number of submissions so it may take a bit of time to get back to you.

Finally, if you've read this far... it is after all Fiction Friday so perhaps you are in need of a story. The following is not exactly fiction (actually, it's not fiction at all), and it's written by, yes, Yours Truly, so take it as a grain of salt. Or just an overworked editor buying himself some time. Or simply as memories of the good old days.

In short, take it as you will, and have a great weekend. And get those submissions in while you're at it, as we'll set a deadline soon.

 

Rights of Spring

by Preston Smith (copyright 2023, all rights reserved)

So yeah...

Ok...

You wanna hear a story?

It's dark. It's late.

So have a beer, friend. A piwo or two.

And just sit right there.

I'll tell you a story.

I'll tell you a story all right.

I once rented a room in the house of an old Polish babcia. This was a small house, and my chamber (for that is how I remember it) boasted its own separate exit to the back yard.

This is how I preferred it. My comings and goings thus could be both late and private--as could be my visitors--but on this morning I was somewhat alarmed to wake to a wide open door. Only somewhat alarmed, I admit, as this was early spring, just after a fresh summer rain, and in this tiny Polish village wide-open doors were the norm. Especially as neither I nor said babcia had anything much to steal.

Only there was some cause for alarm. The door--or make that the exit created by the door--all but shimmered silver from hinges to frame. In fact, the yard beyond the door seemed out of focus, appeared to undulate. I felt then a quiver of fear--and suspicion--and as I rubbed sense into my eyes indeed I saw and understood and knew that I was right. For this was no less than a web than a veritable net, and suspended at the center was a greasy, black and (or so I assumed) a formidable, if not formidably evil, spider.

Of course, I did not think "spider." I thought ARACHNID. In all caps.

For this was big. Bigger than your average spider.

And I'm afraid of spiders. So very afraid.

Deathly afraid.

Of little ones even.

But I was hungry. So very hungry.

I suppose I should have told you that.

Which meant arachnophobia would have to wait. For I also should have told you that between the two of us--between Yours Truly and the babcia, I mean--there was next to no food in the house. A few moldy bread crusts in the cupboard. A carton of spoiled milk in the two-foot tall electric ice box that simply would not, could not muster chill.  And I was twenty-seven years old.

And I was hungry. So very hungry.

Back then it seemed like I was always hungry.

Afraid of being hungry even.

(And yeah, I figure I already told you that).

And maybe you also already figured I'd tried a carton or two of spoiled milk in the past. Desperation does that to you--yet for even for a two-foot electric icebox, this was an absolute failure of white goods. This was a refrigerator that melted even the coldest sick of butter, that turned near frozen beers lukewarm. A refrigerator that de facto meant I rolled out of bed that morning hell-bent on spider web destruction. For now I was more than hungry. I was grumpy. Motivated. Focused on finding a broom and winging that one fell swoop.

At which point I was met with a blood-curdling shriek.

The kind that sends your heart racing, that jolts shoulders up to your ears in fear...

Which meant...

Slowly I turned...

Step by step...

And there she was, haggard and righteous and pointing dangerous and straight at the evil deep within my heart.

'Spiders should be treated with respect,' commanded the babcia. 'Spiders have the right...' 

Shoulders hunched, my jaw-a-slack, I hesitated--shocked first by the shriek, second by the quite dangerious pointed finger (dangerous as this babcia did not have the cleanest of nails) but most of all by the harridan's still unfinished sentence.

Spiders have the right...

The right to what? To live? To feed?

(I mean, the web was all they way across the door.)

To my unborn children?

I didn't get an answer. Instead the old lady tottered over to the spider and told him in soft, whirring Polish that, unfortunately, people (as clumsy and uncultured as they are) do have to make use so doors, so the Mr. (she did address him in formal Polish) was just going to have to take that web down and put it back up in the corner where it belonged. She then pointed to said corner (with that same frightening and yellow nail) and repeated her suggestion with something just short of a curse.

At which point I rolled my eyes, reminded myself that yes, she was a bit crazy and left (now all but starving) through the as-yet-undefiled front door of the house.

I didn't make it far. Hunger does cloud the head. I soon returned, as I had forgotten something or other--but, yes, to my utter shock, that greasy, black-as-pitch spider had gotten rid of the web on the door and, yes, he was now back where he belonged, perched up in the corner of my chamber surrounded by a full, intricate web that should have taken days to create.

The old lady had a knack for catching me out, and with an all but audible snap she was suddenly there, a twinkle in her eye and merrily gauging my disbelief. In truth, she got a good laugh out of that. Then she brushed the whole episode aside, told me that she was from another time (which she was);  said it was too late for me (which it might have been), and added that try as I might I would never be in touch with the natural world.

(And she might have been right about that too).

But now, some thirty years later, have to admit that on a certain level I found her fascinating. The doddering old-wives-tales-of-a-woman who made me tea and cakes, and who for a winter and an early spring was no less than a grandmother with stories to tell.

She was probably a witch though. For that very night she told me that if I'd torn down that spider's web, he would have come in the night to bite me in the face.

And that he would have had the right.

I had a hard time sleeping there after that. Not long after I found myself a normal apartment. With two locks on the door. And stairs. And and escalator even. And not long after that I moved to the city. Left hunger and spiders and springtime behind.

The old woman died less than six months after I moved out. What can I say? Spiders or no spiders, she'd raised the rent. We'd had words. The ice box was never going to work.

But in truth I liked her a lot. Witch that she probably was.

So RIP Pani Ula.

And no, if you happen to be wondering...

If you are up there above, looking down on me know, wondering about me and the natural world...

I've never killed a spider...

Nor wrecked a spider web since.