sergebroom | ”Achilles, Sulking in His Buick"

Among my favorites tales in the December 2008 issue of Realms of Fantasy are Euan Harvey’s ”Harry and the Monkey”, about imaginary friends, and Gregory Frost’s "Late in the Day", about a very old man whose days are guided by a list he wrote to himself the day before, or maybe long before that, but he can’t be sure because he doesn’t remember anything from one day to the next. My favorite though is Jay Lake’s ”Achilles, Sulking in His Buick"

Consider Achilles and his cherry ride, a 1947 Buick Roadmaster Fastback, chopped and channeled, lowered three inches, enough chrome to garnish Olympia itself, windows smoked dark as a Spartan’s heart. The ride shines under fourteen coats of golden paint, hand-rubbed, custom plates reading “TIMÉ”. Don’t ak how much pull it took to get that from the DMV. Achiles has the finest wheels in the Acheans.

Yes, it’s the Trojan War by way of George Lucas’s American Graffiti. If there is one complaint I’d have made immediately after reading the story, it’d have been that it was too short. On second thought, though, it has exactly the length it had to have for it to work best - a subject I blogged about here.

Someone has the nerve to toot a horn at him, but it’s just Odysseus, that odd stoner, in a chartreuse VW microbus with curtained windows and enough dope lit up inside to power a small town. A man who always takes the long way home.

Recommended.