Fiction
Speculative
They took her father first.
Shiu Mai traveled into town with her mother to meet with the police. Her mother had wanted to leave her with her uncle, but the police had requested they both come. The bus was cramped and jerky, its seats hard and unforgiving. The stench of human odor fought with the speed-induced breeze that came in through the open windows. Shiu Mai and her mother sat in identical fashion, not purposely on Shiu Mai's part, though this imitation of her mother gave her a sense of calm and control. They sat facing forward, backs straight, knees together, hands folded on their laps. Shiu Mai, though free to turn and stare out the window at the passing country, limited herself to watching from the corner of her eye.
Their proximity to town could be gauged by the buildings, both in their number and their state of repair. Modern industry sucked the rural provinces dry. She had heard her father say as much, though she could only guess at its meaning. As the bus finally heaved into town, she felt drawn to gawk at the large stone and brick buildings, but fear overcame curiosity. She walked behind her mother, head down, all the way to the police station.
The waiting room was bare and stark white, the only character a product of use and not design. Considering how long they waited, it seemed that the authorities might not be so concerned with them after all, and for the first time that day, Shiu Mai feared more for her father than for herself.
Then, at last, a uniformed woman stepped out and called for them. Shiu Mai followed her mother into a barren hallway. The officer directed her mother to one room and then escorted Shiu Mai to the next. "Respect the authorities," her mother reminded her. "Do as they say."
Inside the little room, one chair faced a long mirror. Leather straps dangled from the arms of the chair and from its front legs. Authority commanded her to sit. As the officer strapped her arms and legs, a light burned momentarily behind the glass. It partially illuminated her mother's face. She looked disembodied and transparent, like a ghost. The emotion that twisted her mother's face struck at Shiu Mai's gut, and she struggled against the straps. She saw her mother's hand reach out to her, and then the light went out, leaving only her own reflection in the mirror.
Before they left the house that morning, her mother had told her, "The Lord has said that whoever is ashamed of Him, He will be ashamed of that person when she stands before the Father. Don't be afraid. We are not ashamed." Shiu Mai wanted to show how willing she was to help, but no one asked her any questions. For three hours, all they did was make her scream.
Forty years later, Shiu Mai cooked her own congee for breakfast and fried her own deep-fried devil, just the way her aunt had taught her so long ago. This was not the city where the grown and successful Shiu Mai bought her congee from the little restaurants that dotted the street between her apartment and the train station. No, this was the countryside and the closest she would ever come to having an ancestral home. It sat on a wide swath of terraced farmland, and here, in the house her uncle had left her, she sat at a small, plain table beside the window with the valley view and enjoyed her bowl of congee seasoned with salt and ginger.
The day would not be pretty, she thought, but it would be good. It could not help but be good. Every day would be good from now until the day she died. She was out of the city and almost free of her job, almost, very soon now. She had come home. Seven years ago, her uncle had died and left her this house, and for seven years, she had dreamed of this day. She breathed in the aroma of her oolong tea and sighed.
Still, the sky was gray and the clouds low and oppressive. She swallowed a bite of deep-fried devil and blurted out the command, "Weather!" In the window, the local forecast replaced her valley view.
To her disappointment, the sky would not be clearing soon, but she quickly lost herself in the novelty of the new weather map as it showed sporadic rain sweeping across the great, open farmlands that she now called home.
She wished her city friends would come and visit her, just once, for then they might understand what she saw in this land. Perhaps they too would fall in love with the simplicity and the space, but she knew they would not come. They had bid her farewell with sad kisses and the obstinate certainty that this was just another step in her pilgrimage toward solitude.
Shiu Mai, now well past her childbearing years, had never married. She might have been beautiful once, though she had not thought so at the time. Now, whenever she perused the pictures of her past, she saw a delicate youth and a gentle grace. On occasion, she allowed herself to question the choices she had made, but she never allowed it long. Today, those questions returned to her. With farm work ahead, it was easy to see the advantage in having a husband, but there had been no such advantage during her reign in the labs. She had made her choice, and she had done well with the opportunities it provided. Now, in just a few more days, she would end that part of her life with one final triumph, and then this land of her youth would finally have her, fully and forever.
"View," she commanded, and the weather map disappeared, revealing again the sweeping breadth of farmland turned bleak and lifeless beneath that low and troubled sky. She could feel the gray creep into her soul.
"Rewind." The wind in the grass reversed its course, and the approaching clouds hastened in retreat. A veiled and lackluster sunrise collapsed in on itself, and the sky faded from gray to black.
The previous evening had been clear and starlit but in her weariness and haste to unpack, she had failed to appreciate it fully. She would do so now and enjoy this first morning.
"Nine forty-five." The clouds vanished, and the stars stretched endlessly across a moonless sky. She smiled as the first rat-a-tat of rain played against her roof, its soothing sound in discord with the view. However else the Global Community planned to use this invention of hers, moments like this would make it all worthwhile. She sipped her tea, ate, listened to the rain, and stared out at that point where the heavens faded into a shadowed earth.
And then she screamed.
A man with a burlap bag over his head peered in at her through blackened eye slits. Shiu Mai's teacup shattered against the cement floor. The man stared past her left shoulder, darted a glance past her right, and then for a moment seemed to look right at her. Then he crept quickly away, around the corner of the house, and out of sight.
Shiu Mai put her hand to her chest as if that alone could calm her quickened breaths and racing heart. She reminded herself that what she had seen was not live but video from some nine hours earlier. She commanded the view to restore itself, and the gray-lit sky returned. She could see now the gentle play of rain on the earth and grass. No sign of the prowler remained.
Unable to help herself, she glanced back over her shoulder. This little breakfast nook she had created occupied an edge of the heart of the house where her uncle's family had once dined and gathered in the evenings after a hard day in the fields. The kitchen was tucked away in the corner. Of the five doors two led outside, two led to bedrooms, and one opened to the home's single bathroom.
The prowler had disappeared around the north face of the house. The window there was small, and though its view also changed with her command, the prowler had not appeared in it. Another window by the front door had also reacted to her command, but her attention had not turned to it until now and, like the rest, it showed only the rain.
In preparation for her arrival, she had arranged for these windows to be installed. These were her inventions, her darlings, her release to a new life. Each kept the area within view, inside and out, under constant video surveillance.
She had also had much of the back wall removed to make way for the large picture window that opened the small house to the expanse of land beyond. As her nerves calmed, she turned back to large window, but she did not yet bend to retrieve her broken cup. Someone had been out there, on her land, staring into her house, either while she slept or while she busied herself with the chore of unpacking. That thought unsettled her homecoming more than a gray sky ever could.
"Surveillance," she commanded, and the window displayed the transmitted image of an attractive young woman sitting in a cubicle. "There was a prowler looking into the window of my country home last night," Shiu Mai said. "I assume you are aware of this."
The woman bowed and, a moment later, the window showed a top-view map of the house. A dotted red line showed the path the man had taken, coming in out of the south. He had crept up to the southern wall, just outside her bedroom, before moving around the back. The path broke twice, where the prowler had entered blind spots created by the placement of the windows, but the path continued on, leading away to the north. Shiu Mai relaxed a little more.
Beside the map, video now appeared, showing what had been visually captured of the prowler's passing. He appeared first as a faint image in the dark. Infrared and ultraviolet images zoomed in on the man's face. Though not yet hidden behind the burlap bag, his facial features remained blurred and generic at that distance. Before he could come into focus, he stopped, abruptly. Up to that point, he had been walking casually, like a man out for a stroll, but now it seemed that something had surprised him, startled him. He stood facing the house for several seconds, and then pulled out the bag and slipped it over his head. By his movement, it seemed the bag had been tucked into his back pocket or perhaps his belt. He moved forward again, but now he came stealthily, intent on not being seen.
The prowler approached the house and peered into her bedroom window. He waited there for several minutes before moving around to the back of the house. Shiu Mai figured that if he had been after a glimpse of something, he would have been disappointed in what he found. She found little comfort in that thought.
In the city, she would have blackened out her windows, but here there had seemed no need. The violation of that space, that guarantee of privacy by the measure of distance, angered her.
When the prowler reached the back of the house, he did something odd. He glanced at the back window in passing as he crept by, as if to be sure that nobody was watching, but something startled him. He forgot his stealth, stood upright, and stared, or at least seemed to simulate a stare, considering she could not see his face. He cocked his head first to one side and then the other, as if studying something. Finally, he crept forward and peered in through the glass. Her body remembered the adrenaline rush of fear as she watched the replay of the moment the prowler had startled her. She must have been lost in thought not to have seen him earlier, but then, too, the image she now viewed had been brightened. The man who stood so clearly before her now would have been only a shadow otherwise.
At last, he moved on around the corner, and Shiu Mai watched for his retreat into the distance. It did not come for two more minutes. In that time, he was lost in a blind spot, and that bothered her. She could think of nothing of interest at that corner of the house, nothing to see, nothing to steal. Inside the wall, the plaster had been chipped away to clear space for the server that controlled the window hardware, but no one could gain access to that from outside, not unless he had torn away a section of brick wall. Still, whatever he had been up to, he had, at last, moved on.
The girl in the cubicle reappeared. "My records show that the authorities were dispatched. They conducted a search of the outlaying perimeter. We ran a check on the interior of the home and determined that you were by yourself. Your vital signs were good, and you were already asleep, so the police filed a report and left without entering the house."
Shiu Mai nodded her acceptance of the report. "Please make a note that, should this happen again, I am to be notified immediately."
Once again, the girl bowed, and then, with a single command, Shiu Mai cleared the cluttered window and replaced the image of the girl with that of a rugged, middle-aged European in an Armani suit. Shiu Mai took a step back in surprise, having expected to get a secretary first.
"Chairman Moretti," she said, gathering her wits about her, "how are you?"
"Wonderful." He had an angelic smile that creased the lines around his eyes. "I see you've learned of your midnight visitor. That was good luck, was it not? An unexpected field test before the big day."
"Unless it was not luck that sent my visitor. I thought maybe you had something to do with this."
He raised his hands in innocence. "I only wish I had, but perhaps I will take the credit anyway. Your Prime Minister should feel very safe tonight. We had your man at several hundred yards out."
The Prime Minister would indeed feel safe, she thought. Despite what the press releases implied, or even directly expressed, he would still be under the constant watch and care of the secret police, both onsite and in a perimeter blockade well beyond the limits of the window surveillance system. Still, he would be spending the night in a modest city apartment. The Global Community would proclaim that the Prime Minister trusted the window surveillance system enough to put his own life solely in its care. A lie though it may be, it would open the nation to the system and bring it one step closer to joining the Global Community.
"The system worked perfectly," Shiu Mai replied. "I was under constant watch and care and never lost a moment's sleep."
The Chairman pointed his finger at her. "Perhaps I should be asking you if you orchestrated this event? One last justification for your move to the countryside?"
She shook her head in humble denial, unable to express the truth. The premature timing of her return had raised eyebrows, an undesirable effect, considering how closely her work was tied with the government. Even so, she needed the distance. The project and its future were out of her hands now. She held the public responsibility for the Prime Minister's life, and yet could do nothing but sit back and wait. For months, the stress had frayed at her nerves, leaving her restless and unable to sleep. Only here had she found the distance and the peace she needed. Last night, it felt like she had slept forever.
They continued in polite, veiled conversation that maintained the lie for any prying ears. At last it was her turn to bow and wait for the Chairman to break the connection. As he did, the image of his imperial face blinked out of existence, and she looked out once more at the view of the terraced farm.
From where he stood in the morning rain, the man in the burlap mask stared back at her.
This time Shiu Mai did not scream; instead, she almost lost the capacity to breathe. The view was live. The rain she saw falling also played against her roof, and yet the prowler stood like a living scarecrow, watching her through blackened slits.
"Blackout!" she screamed. From the inside, the view darkened a shade, but from outside, the windows should have turned completely black, cutting off the man's view. He stood as before, unfazed.
Shiu Mai felt her panic fade and give way to anger. She had been in communication with her company, with her boss, even, at the very moment the prowler returned, and yet no warning had been given.
"Surveillance!" she ordered, but the window did not obey. It remained focused on the morning drizzle and the man with the burlap face. "Surveillance!" she screamed again, now backing away across the room. The man's face turned to follow her movement. He could still see her. The blackout command had failed.
Now the image in the window changed. She saw herself, her own face aged with anger and fear. In replay, again and again, her image screamed that single word, "Surveillance!" and each time she saw her own face crumble with the realization of her own helplessness.
She locked herself in the windowless bathroom. A showerhead jutted out of the wall above a drain in the floor. A washbasin and mirror stood opposite it, and a small toilet was squeezed into the corner.
She fumbled for her phone, dialed her company headquarters, and heard nothing but deathly silence. The signal had been blocked. She curled up on the toilet, tried to think, and, failing, fought the urge to scream.
She ground her palms into her eyes and tried to focus, to drive back the panic and the fear. Someone knew about the windows. They knew enough to hack the software. That seemed impossible.
She ran water in the washbasin and splashed it against her face. A white cloud of minerals swirled through the water. For an instant, she considered that she would need to put a filter on the line coming in from the well. All those minerals would be hard to clean from the walls and floor, and they could not be good for the skin.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Behind it, a light blinked on, and she saw her mother's distorted face.
Shock, she told herself. I'm in shock.
The system did not control the mirror. Could not produce what she now saw. The light blinked off, and the face disappeared.
She touched her hand to the mirror, her mind whirling with the fear that had twisted her mother's face. Shiu Mai understood fear. It had governed her life.
She returned to the toilet and leaned forward with her head between her knees. She needed to think. It would take connections and power to take over her system. This was no simple burglary. A point was being made. A protest.
Shiu Mai knew about protests. In a sense, she owned this house because of a protest. Her cousin, her uncle's only child, had been involved in an anti-Community protest years earlier. It had raged for three days and then petered out peacefully. Her cousin, Hong Ying, had survived his adventure and returned to his normal life of work and classes. Then, one by one, protest leaders began disappearing. Ying called his parents to say he feared for his life, and the next day he disappeared.
The loss felt fresh, as close and as real as the mineral clouds swirling in the basin. The man outside seemed distant and unreal. His voice came to her the same way, distant and unreal. She heard him calling her name, but for a moment, her own name felt foreign to her. It no longer belonged to her, nor was she the woman sitting on the toilet, locked in her bathroom. All this was happening to someone else. She was outside of it all, watching, and helpless to act.
"Shiu Mai," said the voice, "come out of the bathroom. We need to talk."
She looked to the bathroom door but did not move. She waited, though unsure for what. Would they come with the smashing of glass or the splintering of wood? She hoped they would kick in the doors and leave her windows alone. Her windows. Her babies. They had already taken them from her, violating her.
Wood did not splinter and glass did not break. For a moment, it surprised her, but then she remembered the locks. If they had control of the windows, certainly they had control of the locks.
"Shiu Mai, you have done well. The window surveillance system is a great accomplishment."
She listened to the voice, her lips slightly parted. It sounded familiar somehow.
"But this is how the Global Community will use it, not to protect our people but to imprison them. Your invention will make each man's home his prison. Even in leaving the house, there will be no privacy, no peace. Anywhere there are windows, anywhere there is glass, they will be watching, both inside and out."
It sounded so much like Ying, but that was not possible.
"Come out of the bathroom so we can talk."
It was a trick. As soon as she opened the door, they would pounce on her, but if they were inside already, they could just kick in the door. There would be no stopping them.
"I know we can talk this out. You still remember what they did to your parents."
Shiu Mai rose to her feet. She did remember what happened to her parents. They had been persecuted for their faith in a foreign god. Religion, they said, was the enemy of world peace. The authorities beat them and took away their jobs, and then they simply disappeared. They took her father first.
She came to live with her uncle after that. He was not her uncle, really, but a friend of the family. They had taken her in and waited for her parents to return. That day never came.
With a deep breath, and her eyes squinted shut, Shiu Mai opened the bathroom door. Nothing happened.
She dared to look, but the house stood empty and undisturbed. Even the broken teacup lay where she had left it. Outside, the man in the burlap mask stood waiting in the rain.
"I wondered if you'd ever come out again," said Ying's voice.
Shiu Mai said, "There is a little hut, out of sight, down on a lower terrace, where we used to shade ourselves and store our tools."
"And hide and play as children," he continued for her. "And when I came home after my first year at school, it was there that we kissed."
She nearly cried at the mention of it. They once had a symbol they drew in the dirt, a bird flying between two crescent moons, which indicated that they should meet by the shed. She had meant to ask about the symbol. She would never have dared speak of the kiss.
When she had visited the house a few months ago, preparing the plans for the new windows to be installed, she had taken a moment to visit the old shed. It still stood. Forgotten and half-rusted blades hung on its walls. In so many ways, the farm had died with her uncle.
"Take off the mask," she said.
"It's not safe."
Strange, she thought, that he did not shake his head. That seemed such an automatic thing to do when denying a request, but he just stood there, in the rain, watching her. The house was silent.
"It's not too late," he said. "We can stop what you've done. My people can hack into your house, but that won't do us any good. You, however, have access to a far greater target."
"The Prime Minister."
"That's right. With your help, just the right word from you, we can hack into the house he'll use tonight. We can stop this, now. Remember what happened to your parents. Remember what happened to me."
Losing Ying had crushed her. The Community had taken her parents. It had taken the man she loved. Perhaps the natural thing would have been to fight against it, to get herself killed the way he had. Instead, she had refused to hurt ever again and thus buried herself deep within the very body she feared.
"What did happen to you?" she asked. "I thought you died."
"Nearly, but not quite."
The man in the window had the same strong shoulders she remembered in Ying. He had grown into such a beautiful young man. She had thought one day they would marry.
But here he was again, standing in the steady, falling rain. Rain. She no longer heard the beat of raindrops upon the roof.
"I wanted to come for you," said the voice, "but it wasn't safe. I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry my parents died never knowing that I still lived."
She saw the falling rain, but the house was silent. The image of the man was a recording, not live. He could be anywhere by now, even inside the house. She scurried to the kitchen and pulled a butcher's knife from its drawer.
"Shiu Mai, what are you doing?"
"I'm scared. I need time to think."
"There is no more time. We need to act."
"Quiet," she demanded. "I need to think."
Was this Ying come back from the dead, urging her on to treason through fear, through love? If she refused, there were other, less pleasant ways for him get the information.
Another option came to her. How likely was it that anyone could hack her system? It seemed impossible. Only the Community itself had the power to pull off something like this. The night prowler had been real, and his presence there had concerned her superiors. That was why they had not bothered to wake her. They needed time to set this up. They were testing her loyalty.
Perhaps.
Whatever the truth, she knew which option she feared more. She put the knife to her throat.
"Shiu Mai, what are you doing?"
"I won't help you."
"But, your parents…"
"My parents gave their lives refusing to renounce what they believe in. I believe in this system."
Outside, the rain stopped falling and the man in the burlap mask disappeared. Shiu Mai braced herself, fearing that slitting her own throat might still prove the better option. Then the angelic face of Chairman Moretti smiled at her from the window.
"Put down the knife," he said. "You are in no danger."
She kept the knife pressed to her throat and her eyes fixed on the movement of his lips.
The situation was, he said, just as she had imagined it. It had all been a test.
She set down the knife.
"Do you need a doctor?"
"No, I'll be fine. I just want to be alone."
"Try not to be too angry with us. You can certainly see the necessity. We had to be sure. I can only imagine how helpless you felt, trapped under the scrutiny of your own system, but, just think, before long that is how every criminal and traitor will feel. They will know the terror you've experienced. This is the beginning of a new and perfect era, a global era. Your work will change society, forever."
She nodded. "I understand. I just need to be alone."
"Of course, take the entire day. Relax. Enjoy your retirement. We will talk again, tomorrow. This time as friends."
She forced a smile and bade him farewell. The dreary view returned.
Hesitantly she made for the door and opened it. The view outside was just as she saw it through her window. She breathed in the muggy air and crept out through the mud and rain-drenched grass until she came to the corner of the house. There, where the prowler had paused the night before, she saw a faint but fresh carving. A bird flying between two crescent moons.
She hurried along the terraced path between the ancient fields. Part of her still looked forward to seeing Hong Ying again, if only as a bitter form of closure. She wondered what he would look like, but more than that, she wondered why he had thought her so simple. Did he think she would not see that the Chairman's voice did not quite match the movement of his lips? It was clever, she thought, this final ruse, meant to move her to choose love over fear. It was not so clever, though, to think that love could make a difference. Nor was it wise to meet her in the shed, innocently waiting among so many half-rusted blades.
At least she could kiss him again, once more, and this time she could say goodbye.
Shiu Mai came out of retirement and abandoned her attempted return to the countryside. The cloud of minerals swirling in her basin had been the trigger. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the milky vortex, and she knew the farm was simply more than she could handle.
Between personal appearances, she worked on perfecting the use of her surveillance system as an interrogation device. She had little time for such work now, for it seemed the whole world adored her. She had overshadowed the publicity stunt with the Prime Minister by her killing her one true love for the safety and security of her people. Though the plastic surgeons could have repaired the ragged, red scar that now crossed her palm, she kept it as a symbol of that day, and the world adopted it in turn. Images of the scarred hand were plastered across every city in honor of her ultimate sacrifice for the public good.
That evening, she had just come off a three-day tour and was exhausted. Still, instead of going home, she had returned to the lab. Over the previous months, she had perfected the system's technology against political terrorists, but the subject now was a religious dissident. She had insisted that his interrogation wait until she had time to do it personally. She did not enjoy this part of the research, but her experience in the farmhouse had inspired her. The system had to be perfected for all its uses.
She sat at her station and studied the images, preparing her assault. First, there was the live image of the subject, then the prepared footage: home movies, family photos, images of random half-starved inmates, video of executions both public and private, the video of his daughter's secret arrest, and the live feed that would, at the proper moment, carry his daughter's torture.
Both father and daughter were praying, she noticed. Clearly then, they did not intend to hide their criminal beliefs. She supposed the young girl had been told to cooperate with the authorities, to tell them everything she knew. What foolishness.
Though the father rambled, Shiu Mai noticed the daughter constantly repeated a rehearsed prayer. She recognized it on her lips as a prayer from her own youth, and she remembered herself on her knees reciting that prayer to a God she did not understand. Then, in horror, she realized she was mouthing the words along with the girl and quickly snapped her mouth shut. It was not safe to do such things, not even for her.
Quiet and nearly empty, the lab encased her like a tomb. Her mouth had gone dry. She wanted water, and that triggered memories of the swirling mineral cloud. She coughed and felt a wave of nausea wash over her.
At her command, the images disappeared. She hesitated and then called up the archived video of her mother's confession, the one taped while she watched Shiu Mai's torture. This had become a habit of late, a dangerous one. Her superiors would know. Eventually, they would start asking questions. Worse than that, she had started asking questions of her own.
Too late to second-guess her choices now, she told herself. She touched the glass, resting a fingertip on her mother's grief-stricken mouth. Sadness welled in her, a sadness not for mother or father, nor for home or Hong Ying, but for something deeper, as if this were the bedrock of longing upon which everything else was built. She longed to be ruled by love instead of fear. She wanted to cry and regretted the tears that would not come.
She glanced at the time. It was late. Fatigue weighed on her like a physical presence. Send the prisoners back to their cells, she decided; this could wait. She gave the order, cleared her screen, and promised herself she would never again watch her mother's video. Her parents were dead. They had their God. She had her system. It was too late to change things now. No good could come of wishing for things that could not be. Besides, there were no secrets anymore. Were she to follow their God now, it would mean her execution. A converted public hero would be too great a risk. The Community would never allow it.
She settled into the back seat for the drive home to her expansive new house with the coveted city view. At her command, the car windows darkened. She put her hand to the glass. They could be watching, even now. Omnipresent. Omniscient. Almost godlike in their powers.
Power without love, she thought, is hell.
She closed her eyes and thought again of her parent's God, this God who claimed to love her. She turned up her palm to study the jagged scar, the seal that was meant to set her destiny. This was the decision. She had meant for there to be no going back.
But then, this God of love, He claimed to carry her scars on His hands. The choices remained, love or fear, and for once she thought she understood. His were the only scars that mattered.
After Shiu Mai's private execution, she was laid in state. Thousands filed by daily to view her within her glass coffin. The truth of what she had done, and how she had died, would never be told. She remained a hero of the Global Community.
In her honor, images of her life and triumphs flashed across the curved glass lid. Two brief images, lost among all the others, flashed as lone tributes to the decision, the commitment that had cost her her life. They had been inserted at the risk of life and freedom, but some things could not go unheralded.
One was a dark and blurred image of her mother in prayer. The other was of Shiu Mai, grown and graying, kneeling on her bedroom floor, weeping tears of joy.
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Copyright 2008, Wade Ogletree. All rights reserved. Wade Ogletree's "The Sphinx and Ernest Hemingway" received honorable mention for The Best Fantasy and Horror, 2007. He has been published in Fantasy Magazine, Abyss & Apex, Allegory Ezine and others, including his favorite source for Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy, the magazines of Double Edged Publishing. Mr. Ogletree also runs an online fiction critique forum at betterfiction.com.
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