A Survivor’s Guide to Engine Failure at 35,000 Feet
Short fiction by Lee D. Thompson
Dr. Shabazz has started to take the back stairs out of his office. It’s undignified, he knows, but a man needs some peace.
There’s another letter to answer, from a fellow who survived an airplane falling out of the sky, but dreads his soul wasn’t so fortunate. Then there’s Lester, due back tomorrow to discuss a slow loris at the zoo, a creature with some disturbing ideas about humanity. And somewhere a woman from Loon Lake is holding Shabazz responsible for the destruction of her family.
He ought to take a holiday. He ought to stop answering his telephone. Instead, his toe becomes infected.
At Emergency, in search of medical attention, he finds himself playing chess on a pizza box with a man who has a face growing out of his back. A night nurse watches. Shabazz considers leaving, heading home and getting some sleep, where, far away, across a landscape split by an abyss, a cowboy and his talking horse are tracking him and his fine Arabian horse, Diablo…
In these nine stories, Lee D. Thompson finds terror in a world that refuses to explain itself, and something both foolish and necessary in our attempts to make sense of it. His characters want answers, or at least someone willing to listen. But the listeners have troubles of their own.
“Sophisticated literary fiction: haunts, tickles, and disturbs — and subverts. I laughed several times in places I later felt I shouldn’t, and I often shuddered.“
— Michelle Butler Hallett, WFNB Richards Prize comments
Paperback, $32.99 with shipping.
