Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction

This week I unveil a short story titled “Fight Finale From the Near Future!” by James Beamon.

James Beamon writes because he has to… and he can’t find anything worth watching on TV. But he doesn’t need TV when his wife is a muse and his son is amused by the stuff he makes up. And the cat–well, the cat’s not a fan of speculative fiction but has learned to attack on command. James calls Virginia home but his IT work takes him all over the globe. At the moment he is deployed over in Afghanistan, where he manages to write humor during the brief interludes between missions. Here’s James posing in full battle raiment in front of the Kajacki river valley:

There was an additional benefit for me in accepting James’ submission. As soon as I bought his story, I asked him to join our editorial board and help read and rate incoming submissions. His razor-sharp wit fits in nicely among the varying voices on the reading panel.

Here’s a brief preview of “Fight Finale”:

“You both stand back,” Brody says. He walks carefully across the catwalk. Then he hears the hammer of a gun cock back.

This is a needless gesture, as the only guns that require manually cocking to fire are Old West single-action revolvers.  But he hears it, and cringes despite the fact that anyone who wanted him dead would have killed him already unless their firearm was made before 1890. Brody turns slowly to face his nemesis.

Brody sees M. Vella on the catwalk. Behind the villain, Katya is tied up. M. Vella has left the Observer alone because observing never hurt anybody. Apparently, stealth is also useful for foiling good.

“And now, Agent Omen, I will explain to you my plan’s finer points,” M. Vella sneers as he raises the gun. “I call them hollow points.”

A shot rings out, loud, jarring. Silence follows.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2012 at 9:25 pm and is filed under Publishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.