Shards

SHARDS

Shane Jiraiya
Cummings

Praise for
Shards

"
With
Shards
, Shane Jiraiya Cummings takes us on a guided tour of the
darkest backroads of the imagination. It is wonderfully moody and
creepy."

---
Jonathan Maberry, multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author
of
Patient
Zero
.

"
Shane Jiraiya
Cummings with
Shards
shows he is not only a master of the
flash fiction style of writing but has pretty much written the
definitive statement on how it should work. The collection is a
strong statement on the validity of an internet-driven writing
style and is a must have for any collector of Australian dark
fiction."

---
Jeff Ritchie,
ScaryMinds

"
Cummings' work
possesses a Stephen King-like quality, creating rich and colourful
characters in a handful of words ... Well worth the
read."

---
Mark Smith-Briggs,
HorrorScope

"
This is how flash
fiction should be written---sharp, brilliant images conjured by
amazingly few words. Cummings' aptitude for flash fiction is
evident in every carefully chosen phrase."

---
Stephanie Gunn,
HorrorScope

"
Shards
cuts you right open and then sets
about infecting the wound. Cummings' prose is as the title
suggests: short, sharp, and deadly. The tales are relentless,
battering you with their suggestive intensity or mocking with bleak
humour."

---
Dr Marty Young, Founder
, Australian Horror Writers Association.

"
If flash fiction is
the distinctive form of our internet age---and everything points that
way---then I can't think of a better demonstration of the art
than
Shards
."

---
Richard Harland, award-winning author of
The Black Crusade
and
Worldshaker
.

"
Shards
offers a worthy selection of
short-short stories that reflects the author's prominence in the
contemporary upsurge of flash fiction among Australian horror
writers. It is varied, the stories sometimes giving a short sharp
jolt, sometimes evoking a creeping dread, and at other times,
suggesting a world that has already slipped over into darkness.
Fans of the short-short form will welcome this darkly entertaining
foray into a world gone subtly, and at times, unsubtly askew, from
one of Australia's 'new bloods' of horror."

---
Robert Hood, the 'Godfather of Aussie Horror' and
award-winning author of
Creeping in Reptile Flesh
.

* * *

Copyright © Shane Jiraiya Cummings
2011.

A print
version, illustrated by Andrew J. McKiernan (Brimstone Press, 2009,
ISBN: 9780980567724) is available from Brimstone Press:
http://www.brimstonepress.com.au

Smashwords Edition, License Notes
:

This e
-book is
licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be
re-sold or given away to other people. Except in the case of
short-term lending, if you would like to share this book with
another person, please purchase an additional copy for each
recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or
it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your
own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this
author.

All characters in this
book are fictitious.

No reference to any living
person is intended.

* * *

CONTENTS

Introduction

Sacrifices

Prescience

Virgin in the
Mist

Revision Is
Murder

Personal Demons

Stealing
Fire

Firewall

Smouldering
Eyes

Shadow of
Revenge

The Unnatural

Spin the
Witch Bottle

Countdown
Macabre

On Dark Clouds
Borne

Practical
Joke

Interlude, With
Lavender

Dread Seasons

Cruel Summer:
Sand

Dread Seasons
Quartet: Rainbow-Speckled Field

Cruel Summer:
Sun

Dread Seasons
Quartet: Naked Azure Sky

Cruel Summer:
Sky

Dread Seasons
Quartet: The Rustle of Autumnal Leaves

Cruel Summer:
Surf

Dread Seasons
Quartet: Pallid Wisps of Snow

Cruel Summer:
Shadow

Under The Skin

A Killer
Smile

Congo
Jenga

R U
OK?

Itch

Obsessions

Stop

Postcard From Paris (A
Reply)

Song of the
Infernal Machine

Apocalyptic Visions

Burning a Hole in
the Sky

Memoirs of a
Teenage Antichrist

Love in the Land
of the Dead

Wrack

Genesis
Six

* *
*

Introduction

When the short story appeared
in the nineteenth century, it took people a long while to realise
that the new form wasn't just anecdotal tale or cut-down novel.
Edgar Allen Poe was one of the first to think through the
distinctive principles. Now there's another new form, flash
fiction, with different distinctive principles. Shane Jiraiya
Cummings is a specialist in those principles.

Flash fictions aren't just
ultra-short short stories because at this length there's no time
for story in the usual sense. No full action, no trajectory of
this-leads-to-that, no build up to a climax. There's only time for
a snapshot, a frozen moment. What comes before and what comes after
must be implicit in that moment.

The dynamic
of the pieces in
Shards
is the dynamic of something-coming-clear. It's
like a change in the quality of the light, a sharpening and
deepening of shadows. Rarely are we given a huge twist of
revelation, where a situation that looked one way turns out very
different in the end. This is more a matter of mood.

Carl Dreyer, the great Danish
film director, must have had this kind of effect in mind when he
said: "think of a room, an ordinary domestic interior; then suppose
that there's a dead body in the room next door---and see how
everything changes."

Dreyer was
talking about a horror that works by subtlety and suggestion.
In
Shards
, there
are a few pieces of out-and-out horror, but mostly the horror is
delicate, the kind to make the hairs stand up on the back of your
neck. I had an aunt who used to shiver and say that someone had
just walked over her grave. That's the feeling I get from the
pieces in
Shards
.

One of my favourite pieces is
"Rainbow-Speckled Field". A happy scene ... overtaken by a nameless
dread ... the uttered phrase 'the moles are hunting' ... and that's
all. What does it mean, 'the moles are hunting'? Why is the phrase
so chilling when it could so easily be comic? What's going on
here?

If you insist
on explanations,
Shards
probably isn't for you. Explanations are for
novels or longer stories. The only explanation here is that fears
come true: fears about disease, fears about fire, fears about dead
leaves and sand. In "On Dark Clouds Borne", snakes start falling
from the sky---but don't look for rational causes. The irrationality
is the point.

The fears
often spring out of the tiniest real-life moments. We all know the
experience of being honked at repeatedly by the car behind as we
wait for a break in the traffic. But what if it went one step
further? ("Stop") Or---as a child---being left with the towels and
beach paraphernalia, waiting for the family to return. But what if
they never do? ("Cruel Summer: Shadow") In
Shards
, the ordinary safe world
doesn't return. Those brief moments of dread are given free rein,
spiralling out of control.

Some of the pieces are linked
by title: the "Cruel Summer" series and the "Dread Seasons" series.
But more than that, almost all the pieces are linked by an evenness
of tone and similarity of vision. Across the whole volume, a
particular sense of world accumulates. It's not a locatable world
geographically; there are almost no place names. Rather, it's a
world of free-floating anxiety and insecurity, a state of the soul.
The individual pieces are like separate sections of a
multi-sectioned poem.

I've tried my
hand at writing flash fiction, but reading
Shards
has been a revelation. Now I
realise I've never truly mastered the form, only a few special
cases of ultra-shortness. By contrast, Shane Jiraiya Cummings can
carry it off successfully time and time again. If flash fiction is
the distinctive form of our internet age---and everything points that
way---then I can't think of a better demonstration of the art
than
Shards
.

---
Richard
Harland

* * *

Prescience

The ghost of the wound itched
and burned from deep within my side. It burned with greater
intensity as I climbed the stairs to the Marynth branch of Savings
and Equity. Marble and steel ushered me inside, where I met the
long line to the teller. I pocketed my mobile phone with a sigh and
took my place in the queue behind a broad man in a grey suit. My
side throbbed.

Two more circles of pain burned
in my chest---one close to my right shoulder, the other hovering over
my heart. They were different to the pain in my side, just heat
under the skin. They didn't belong to me, but I felt them
anyway.

I smoothed my blouse and soon
caught sight of the security guard. He was young and nervous-eyed,
with a Brylcreem part. I left my place in the line to approach him.
George, the name badge said, just as it should. My sneakers
squeaked on the marble floor with each step towards him.

He tensed up at my approach,
his shoulder a knotted ball of muscle as I lightly laid a hand on
it. He took my whispered words with good grace, nodding not once
but twice, before unholstering his pistol. A Smith and Wesson, just
as it should be. I wondered then, as I did in my dreams, if they
still made revolvers like his anymore.

I reached into my pocket just
as the masked gunman stormed through the glass doors.

"Get down!" His scream was
muffled by an over-tight balaclava. He shoved the man in the grey
suit to the ground---he crashed like a felled walrus, taking an
elderly couple down in his sprawl.

George stepped forward with
both hands wrapped around his Smith and Wesson, his legs splayed
wide. A classic pose of authority for a classic weapon. "Freeze,"
he yelled, playing it by the numbers.

My side radiated heat, the
irritation and pain tunnelling right through me.

The gunman swivelled and fired.
No warning, just a blast louder than thunder and deadlier by far.
The gauze pad in my pocket was in my grasp and I wasn't letting
go.

When the bullet struck, I don't
know whether my side burst open to meet it or it made its own hole,
as it should. In that moment, as the bullet tore through my soft
insides, I knew why I'd had my appendix removed as a girl. Gunshots
create all sorts of complications if you aren't prepared for
them.