"Swallowed by a God" by Daniel Gooden

Here's a sneak peek at another one from Content Editor Daniel Gooden, Swallowed by a God. This short story is a great example of how our short fiction integrates with and enhances the tale presented in our web comic, The Torn God. In the comic, we see Polorun taking possession of Reverie; here in this short story, we find out what it was really like for the poor man.

Here you go:

“Aiemer stream shift in five, four, three, two, one,” counted down the navigator of the airship, Brailee.

In his shade form, all appendages and trailers of smoke like some malevolent fog, Polorun drove into Reverie—bashing in through his mouth and nose, squirming past his eyes and eardrums, prying up under his fingernails, shoving past his anus, and soaking into his pores. Like the gossamer worm sliding silken threads into the brain of a cow, the dead god eased into the Uddani’s mind, seeking out his new friend. He began with the corporal’s last thought, a memory he’d opened a moment before Polorun had struck.

“My mother taught me to fish,” Reverie’s father said. The older man put his foot on the rail of the small skiff and pulled in the cast net. Reverie stalled a moment, still puzzled at the darkness swirling through the water. His father’s words rolled about in his ears a moment before they caught.

“Your mother?” he questioned. His grandfather had been the fisher. Reverie looked around at the salt marsh, Naahm hazy to the north, then closer at the man standing on the bow. This was a memory of his father, but this man was not him. He looked Uddani, could have been his brother or cousin…except for those bright blue eyes.

“Where’s my father?” the Uddani asked, forgetting for a moment that this was his memory—a picture in his own mind. “What are you doing on my boat?”

Polorun laughed, pulled the cast net into the boat, and then laughed again as the silver fish spilled struggling across the bottom. In his confusion Reverie grinned too, but it was fleeting. The darkness in the water was spilling out of the fish’s mouths, bleeding out their gills and running up the man’s pant legs. Where are his feet? The Uddani squinted and squeezed his brow with his hands, like a man out too long in the sun.

“The thing I like about fishing is the wait,” said the dead god, his voice much more now like Reverie's father’s.

“Get out of our boat—out of our head,” Reverie muttered. He beat a fist against his nose and let the pain set his mind straight. “My boat! My head!” he managed to yell. He dropped his pole and tackled Polorun. The soldier meant to drive him down onto the deck of the Brailee—because that’s where he was, standing on the deck of the airship, not in his father’s boat on the salt marsh above Naahm.