6 Fantasy Stories Read Online Free

sheathed in his own remains.
    “Sorry,” said young Epitome. The confusion on his face shifted to horror. Tears rolled out of both eyes. He drifted close to Hericane as if he knew her, as if she could help or reassure him in some way.
    Hericane felt a mild zap like static electricity as Overtime took her off pause mode. Her body jerked as she regained the power of movement in her native time frame.
    Even when she was able to move and speak again, however, she did not know what to say to young Epitome.
    He continued to hover in front of her, alternately meeting her gaze and staring down at his newly minted breastplate. His expression shifted quickly, like super-powers in the Bonus Round, switching from anguish to disbelief to horrified rage to blank shock...though the overriding visible emotion was deep confusion.
    “I think I owe you an apology,” he said slowly, returning his gaze to Hericane. “I’m sorry for killing your father.” He said it like a question, raising his voice on the last syllables.
    “I only wanted to help him,” said Epitome. His eyes narrowed and shunted to one side, staring into space. “I wanted to stop him from hurting people...but God knows I didn’t want this to happen.”
    Tears rolled down his face, and his shoulders shuddered. He hung his head, then caught sight of the breastplate and quickly looked up again.
    Hericane drifted forward and took him in her arms. She stroked the stubble on his scalp as he sobbed silently into her shoulder.
    “I’m sorry he hurt you,” said the man who was or had been or would be her father, trembling against her. He was younger now than she was, and she did not know him though she had known him all her life, and it was almost too strange for her to bear.
    At that moment, Overtime bobbed into view behind Epitome and pointed to one of the fifty watches strapped onto his right arm. Then, he turned and waved at the rainbow disk of a newly opened time chute spinning in midair behind him.
    ‘Time’s up,’ he signaled. ‘Time to send him back.’
    Hericane shook her head and held on to her father.
    “How can I live with this?” said Epitome. “Knowing I did this to myself? Knowing this is what’s in store for me?”
    “Don’t close yourself off,” whispered Hericane, giving him the only advice that she could think of...the advice that she had wanted to give him for decades. “Don’t be afraid to reach out to other people. Maybe things will be different for you next time.”
    Overtime tapped Epitome on the shoulder then, and he drew back from Hericane. “I don’t know if I can take that chance,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you again.”
    He reached out then and ran his fingertips softly down the curve of Hericane’s cheek. She had never known that he could be so gentle. His eyes widened and sparkled as he gazed at her wonderingly.
    She felt tears of her own begin to fall.
    Finally, she understood why he had pushed her away all her life. Not because of her sexuality. Not because he did not love her.
    He had pushed her away because he had wanted to protect her from himself.
    “I love you, Dad,” said Hericane, her voice catching. It was the last time in her life that she would say those words to Epitome...though, from his point of view, it was the first time that she said them to him.
    Then, Overtime took young Epitome by the hand and guided him into the swirling disk of the time chute.
    Hericane should not have been happy, she thought, because, after all, she had lost her father that day. He had died right before her eyes.
    And yet, her heart was full and her tears were tears of joy, for just before Epitome slid headfirst into the chute, he looked back over his shoulder and said the one thing that she had never heard him say to her before.
    “I love you, too,” he said. And then he was gone.
    *****

Blazing Bodices
    By
    Robert T. Jeschonek
    When the woman who was not a woman burst into our evening, we