By Keech Ballard
A woman walks into a bar, sits down, adjusts her little black dress, and orders a mistletoe margarita.
A man at the end of the bar raises his neat tumbler, filled to the brim with translucent single malt. He confesses that he spent much of his youth in Japanese internment camps and runs through a list of recent troop movements in various parts of the adjoining territories.
“Boring,” the woman says.
A man in the middle of the bar raises a schooner of beer, darker than amber in aspect. He confesses that he spent much of his youth in the Hamptons, and asks if she needs help getting across the border, any border.
“Not right now,” the woman says.
Everyone in the bar stands up, turns to the woman, and bows together as one, way down low to the waist. They raise their heads an instant later, somewhat bewildered, and look around for the hidden lama or imam who is however nowhere to be seen. Everyone resumes their previous poses and conversations, slightly humbled by the experience.
“Completely unnecessary,” the woman says.
A man standing at the other end of the bar scowls at no one in particular. He suddenly announces to the room at large that they should tie her up, take her out into the desert, chop her living body into small pieces, and bury them as far apart from one another as possible.
“It’s been tried,” the woman says.
The woman swivels her hips, sliding down from the stool. She looks in the mirror behind the bar and sees that her lipstick is still perfect. She reaches for a cigarette and snaps her purse shut. She adjusts a few vagrant strands of imaginary hair with her fingertips. She smiles brightly and her eyes glow red for a moment, before returning to something resembling a more natural state. She looks the man standing at the end of the bar up and down two or three times, as if she were inspecting a side of beef for subtle contextual flaws it might be tempted to conceal.
“You’ll do,” she says to the man. “Come along, honey, before I change my mind.”
The man’s nose twitches, but otherwise he doesn’t move a muscle.
“Now, soldier,” the woman says. “Do you want to live forever?”
The man walks slowly toward the exit, moving sinuously, like an ice cream dream machine caught in the very act of melting. The woman follows him out the door, tapping the cigarette against her wrist to the rhythm of the rhyme pouring straight from the jukebox tucked away in a corner, which lurches into action for no discernible reason.
“I wonder what that was about,” the bartender mutters under his breath. He methodically wipes the shot glass gripped in one large meaty fist, which shines like the clearest of all lead crystals, even though it’s not.
“Only the shadow knows for sure,” the woman whispers as she fumbles for her keys, which are buried somewhere near the bottom of her purse.
About the Author
Keech Ballard
Keech has been writing fiction and poetry for 40 years, and is currently working on a speculative novel of the Afterlife, focusing on Victorian literature, though it is technically set in the near future.
He recently published a short piece of creative nonfiction in Ellipsis Zine.
This is his first SF story to be published. Thanks for listening!
Ion Newcombe is the editor and publisher of AntipodeanSF, Australia’s longest running online speculative fiction magazine, regularly issued since January 1998, and conceived back around November 2007. He has been a zealous reader and occasional writer of SF since his childhood in the 1960s, and even sold a few stories here and there back in the '90s.
Mark Webb's midlife crisis came in the form of attempting to write speculative fiction at a very slow pace. His wife maintains this is a good outcome considering the more expensive and cliched alternatives. Evidence of Mark's attempts to procrastinate in his writing, including general musings and reviews of books he has been reading, can be found at www.markwebb.name.
Timothy Dwyer is an American science-fiction writer living in New Zealand.
Haneko Takayama is an award-winning Japanese writer. In 2009, her short story “Udon, Kitsune tsuki no” was a runner-up for the Sogen SF Short Story Award. 
Kerrie Noor was born in Melbourne Australia in 1960 but has spent most of her adult life in Scotland.
Amy Logan's first work was published on October 29, 1970. It has been a bit of a dry spell since, so she is very excited to have the opportunity to contribute to AntipodeanSF.
Bruce is an older Australian, living in Adelaide, who enjoys reading and writing, especially short stories and flash fiction.
Myna Chang writes flash and short stories in a variety of genres.
Umiyuri Katsuyama is a multiple-award-winning writer of fantasy and horror, often based on Asian folklore motifs.
Laurie Bell lives in Melbourne, Australia. She was that girl you found with her nose always buried in a book. She has been writing ever since she was a little girl and first picked up a pen. From books to short stories, radio plays to snippets of ideas and reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.
Old enough to just remember the first manned Moon landing, Kevin was so impressed he made science his life.
Although a writer of the baby boom persuasion, Ed has not boomed for quite a while.
Tim Borella has never lost his childhood passion for SF and writing in general and has been lucky enough to have worked most of his life as a pilot — in other words, he’s never properly grown up.
Pixie is a voice actor, cabaret performer & slam poet From the Blue Mountains in NSW.
Margaret lives the good life on a small piece of rural New South Wales Australia, with an amazing man, a couple of pets, and several rambunctious wombats.
Alistair Lloyd is a Melbourne based writer and narrator who has been consuming good quality science fiction and fantasy most of his life.
Geraldine Borella writes adult short stories and stories for children and has been published in anthologies for both. In 2018, one of her children’s short stories placed second in The Buzz Words Short Story Prize and she won an ASA Emerging Writer’s Mentorship. She currently works part-time as a hospital pharmacist and as an online creative writing tutor.
Sarah Pratt is an avid fiction writer and a Marketing Consultant.
Timothy Gwyn is a professional pilot in Canada, where he flies to remote communities. During a lull in his flying career, he was a radio announcer for three years, and he is also an author.
