I’ve decided to post a short story of mine for free online. This was originally published in Electric Velocipede 12, and is called The Alchemy of War. This story is the first part of the Silas Bay triptych, along with Ghosts We Have Become and The Sea of Dead Around Her. Involves a bombing of a city and the survivors. Good for fans of Steampunk, weird horror and surrealism. This is shared using a Creative Commons license.
[download Alchemy of War here]
The first in the Silas Bay trilogy. A brother and sister and wife survive a gruesome bombing in the city of Silas Bay. The brother is a philosopher and an alchemist, and he tries to create eternal life by decoding magical spells encoded on the back of turtles.
From the review at The Fix Online:
Karac begins Paul M. Jessup’s “The Alchemy of War” by slaughtering alchemy turtles in an obsessive desire to learn the secrets of eternal life against the backdrop of a mighty industrial city. By the end of the story, the city is destroyed by war, and the turtles have become a symbol of hope and rebuilding for Karac’s wife, Kym. This is a short story told in a fractured way, but it is affecting. The imagery of these enigmatic, magically powerful turtles as the perfect product of “natural” evolution against the polluted and war-ravaged background of the city could have easily been handled too crudely. Jessup wisely approaches the matter obliquely, and the flowering of Kym as the last of the turtles is released is an appropriate climax.
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