Haunted Hearing Aids

The summer 2023 issue of Hexagon Magazine is filled with gorgeous stories, including my tale, Life with Your Haunted Hearing Aids.

Thatʼs not what a person sounds like, you think. But then, itʼs been several weeks since youʼve last heard a voice, and youʼre not sure if youʼre remembering right. Your shoulders tense up. Maybe if you focus hard enough, everything will sound normal again.

You hear something else, raspy, like a paper bag crumpling in the background. When you focus on the sound, you piece together a sentence: Can. You. Hear. Me?

Read more in Hexagon Magazine!

Issue 13 / Summer 2023

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Bottled Words

Unbottle a voice and it would vibrate through air, giving you one—just one—chance for your brain to turn those waves into recognizable words. But for me, it’s not like I could stop a bottled voice and ask, “Can you say that again?

Ready more in “Bottled Words,” out now in Diabolical Plots.

DP FICTION #98B: “Bottled Words” by Carol Scheina

Families have traditions that they’re eager to share with their children, to pass down to the next generation. But for me, with a 90-100 decibel hearing loss in both ears, I couldn’t participate in many of our traditions. I’d smile and nod and keep my thoughts bottled up. This story draws from a lot of my experiences growing up deaf in a non-signing family.

Love and Fish Poop

Marcus laughed when Rella asked him to take a rokri fish with him to Station 12. “Rokri fish? Isn’t that what teens use to send love letters when their parents won’t let them use the comms?”

Fish with a symbiotic digestive system and a love story stretching across the stars. Read more in my story, “From Far Away, With Love,” in Haven Speculative Magazine.

https://www.havenspec.com/from-far-away-with-love

Turtle Chaos!

It’s a tough job cleaning up after the holidaymakers. They have their fun, you deal with the fallout. But when you arrive for work to be faced by a giant genetically modified turtle, you know today is going to be harder than most…

“Clean-up on Planet 9” follows the fallout of the genetically modified turtle, now appearing in Nature: Futures.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00636-7

How do you make a home?

Smoketown is the worst place to be on the generational ship, Brahma. Captain Pari Mediretta has business there, and it ends up being far more colorful than she expects.

You can follow Pari’s adventures in my story, “A Palette of Home,” part of the Brahma Anthology, now in Stupefying Stories!

https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2023/03/tales-from-brahma-episode-2-palette-of.html

Adventures of a Used Time Machine

The electronic sensors of twenty-one different AI machines watched when Aldo rolled the time machine into Aldo’s Antique Artificial Intelligences store.

For Sale: Used Time Machine

Who wants to buy a used time machine? Read more in my story, “For Sale: Used Time Machine. No Refunds!” Out today in Stupefying Stories!

https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2023/03/for-sale-used-time-machine-no-refunds.html

Blank Slate

As the shower steamed around her, Mira’s hand hestitated…

Read more in “Blank Slate,” published in The Dread Machine. This story pulls on my of my own insecurities regarding my appearance, and how those insecurities can come out when dating.

Blank Slate

Storm Fishing

For the longest time, I didn’t understand my older brother’s love of storm fishing. …”

Read more about this little tale of love, loss, and storm fishing in “The Hole in the Storm,” in Daily Science Fiction!

https://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/slipstream/carol-scheina/the-hole-in-the-storm

Volcanic Power

The pup blinked blurry eyes and waited for the woman to run screaming from its magma and heat and death.

Read more in “The Power of Volcanic Love,” now out in Zooscape, an e-zine of fantastic furry fiction!

Two Tales from Stupefying Stories

Two drabbles of mine appeared recently in Stupefying Stories.

A story of ice and love with Inheritance.

“Grandma never hid her head, which instead of hair, had numerous strands of inch-long icicles jutting out like a frozen porcupine.“

Read more at https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2022/10/inheritance-by-carol-scheina.html.

A ghost story without any ghosts with The View from the Old Ship.

Sai groaned at the patrol assignments. “We get the haunted ship.”

Read more at https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-view-from-old-ship-by-carol-scheina.html.