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Shimmer, Number 14 is here and with stories by A.A. Balaskovits, Sunny Moraine, Ari Goelman, Aaron Polson, Carlea Holl-Jensen, A.C. Wise, Meryl Ferguson, Eric Del Carlo, Karin Tidbeck, and Craig DeLancey.

Shimmer Number 14 is here and it's another beautiful one.

The stories began with "Food My Father Feeds Me, Love My Husband Shows Me" by A.A. Balaskovits. This is one of those 'tales as old as time'. A young girl's father is a butcher and he always gives her the choicest cuts. She marries a man who used to be a butcher but is now a vegetarian. He forbids her the meat she loves. When her husband is away, he gives her the keys to all the rooms of their house. She finds one special room. This is a pretty intense story and one you won't forget.

"Chinvat" by Sunny Moraine takes place in a future San Francisco where the Golden Gate Bridge is closed due to earthquake damage. Carter Nolan is a reporter assigned to do a story on an old man named Denn who patrols the bridge to stop people from committing suicide. Carter's wife Maggie does not want him to accept the assignment, because of his past. I won't give more away except to say this story was a very good one.

There are odd, little creatures that are "Made of Mud" in Ari Goelman's story. Our narrator's father finds them and our narrator befriends one of them. Unfortunately, the boy next door and his friend are your typical little troublemakers and you can tell things do not bode well. What's inexplicable aren't the mudlings, as they are called but why our narrator's parents think the troublemakers are his friends.

In "This House was Never a Castle" by Aaron Polson, our narrator lives in a house with no exterior doors with his sisters, Rosamund who is alive and Olivia who is dead and a ghost. Their parents are dead but not ghosts. They can only leave the house through the chimney, windows, or a magic crack. One day they are out gathering food and forget to shut the crack. A wounded soldier from the endless war enters the house and dies. The children are possessed of some magic that helps them survive in this unsettling little tale.

There isn't much to "Minnow" by Carlea Holl-Jensen. Our narrator swells up like a helium balloon, rises up in the sky and meets an old friend. There's not much more.

There is a "Trashman" in the story by A.C. Wise that seems to have special characteristics. He knows everything about you and he has special powers. When you were ten-years old he repaired a broken starship model. Now you need him for something more important. This was one of those beautifully written stories that I always expect from this magazine.

"We Make Tea" by Meryl Ferguson is set in a post-apocalyptic future where most of the population has died, including the owners of a tea plantation. Our narrator is the robotic Plantation Manager who is fulfilling its orders to make tea. This is not to the liking of a soldier who finds the place. He wants it to be a bivouac for his team. Somehow, the Plantation Manager has other ideas in this new take on an old kind of story.

You assume they are werewolves in "Bad Moon Risen" by Eric Del Carlo. That's what our narrator and his crew are fighting. It's not badly written, but there's little that's original here.

As the title implies, "Some Letters for Ove Lindström" by Karin Tidbeck is an epistolary tale, a series of letters written by a woman to her father who has just died. He had been an alcoholic so she had not seen him in a while. She remembers her mother who is a mystery. Her mother was not in the national registry. One day, she just walked into the woods and was never seen again. Her father's friends say that her father said that she had first appeared just walking out of the woods. The end seems to imply the mother's imminent return and something not good, but what that might be is unclear.

Last, there is "Gödel Apparition Fugue" by Craig DeLancey. This shows moments from the life of Kurt Gödel, the great mathematician. It shows his friends, Einstein and Morganstern. It shows Adele, the woman he loved. It hovers between fantasy and science fiction, talking about ghosts and time travel. It's not a story to be summarized, but one to be read. Do so.

Shimmer is the kind of magazine you should read in one sitting, letting the beautiful words wash over you. Subscribe!