Issue 7 cover

With the Blue Heart People

by Patricia Russo

Issue 7 :: Spring 2016 (stories)

With the Blue Heart people, there was always trouble.

She'd heard it was because they were so literal-minded. Big Cyn realized that was a stereotype, but it was hard to shake the notion, bound up as it was with her memories of the man who'd first said those words to her. He was of the No Water people, and they were in a bar one night, and he was laughing. Look at them, he said. They call their city City. Have you ever been to City? There's a restaurant there, by the north gate, with green walls. Good food, by the way, but the drinks are weak. Guess what it's called. Yah. Green Wall Restaurant. Those people have no imaginations.

They have good doctors, Big Cyn said, staring into her glass. It was something to say. It was something everybody said.

It's all talk, the No Water man said. He was pretty well lubricated, and too loud for the small bar. The bartender kept glancing over. She'd only been sitting with him for twenty minutes or so, and already her heart was cold.

...

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"With the Blue Heart People" is roughly 4800 words.

Patricia Russo has had stories published in Fantasy Magazine, ChiZine, Lone Star Stories, Talebones, Tales of the Unanticipated, Not One of Us, Electric Velocipede, and many other places, online and off. Her stories have appeared in the anthologies Corpse Blossoms, Zencore!, The Best of Not One of Us, 52 Stitches, and The Best of Talebones. Her novella Hearts Starve was published as an e-book by Eggplant Literary Productions, and her first collection of short stories, Shiny Thing, was recently released by Papaveria Press. She doesn't have a website, but the book does: www.shiny-thing.com.