Plugs

Angela Slatter’s story ‘Frozen’ will appear in the December 09 issue of Doorways Magazine, and ‘The Girl with No Hands’ will appear in the next issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Kat Beyer’s Cabal story “A Change In Government” has been nominated for a BSFA award for best short fiction.

Jason Erik Lundberg‘s fiction is forthcoming from Subterranean Magazine and Polyphony 7.

Trent Walters, poetry editor at A&A, has a chapbook, Learning the Ropes, from Morpo Press.

FROM THE BOOK OF MONSTERS: YARAMAZ TURKISH CARPETS

by Daniel Braum

Page 392

YARAMAZ TURKISH CARPETS

Species:    Animal

Habitat:    Ranges. Prefers city or suburban. Nocturnal.

Designation:    See special cautions in hunting.

The above name is a rough translation. They are also referred to as “mischievous flying carpets” in other texts.

Although they bear resemblance to and share the gift of flight with the flying carpets of the Arabian Nights lore, Turkish flying carpets are not inanimate objects imbued with magic but sentient living creatures.

Although not intelligent as say a monkey or a dog they are still highly cunning. The creatures make their homes in carpet warehouses where they blend in and like to sleep during the day. Come dark, they fly out into the night and into the windows of unsuspecting humans, usually children. Through some sort of sympathetic communication that is not yet understood, the Turkish carpet will coax the child onto itself and take it for a wild ride, usually lasting until dawn. It is believed that the carpet feeds upon the thrills of the rider and that the ride itself is not random but somehow linked to the subconscious desires of the host. In 1992 the obese son of one time Monster Hunter Charles Stuyvesant was believed to have encountered a particularly wild Yaramaz that flew him from his Brooklyn brownstone all the way to Hershey Pennsylvania. There is reason to believe that this particular beast perished in a vat of heated chocolate but the police report makes
no mention of the beast, only the child’s unlawful entry into the factory.

Recent Observations:

In 2009, rumors of strange flying objects in Brooklyn has sparked belief that the so called “Hershey” Yaramaz did not perish at all. So little is known about their mating and reproduction that designating this Yaramaz an offspring as has been postulated is premature.

Cautions:

Stuyvesant’s field notes from 1992 also indicate that the Hershey Yaramaz did not perish in the encounter. Stuyvesant went hunting the creature and tracked it to a carpet showroom on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Stuyvesant thought he had surprised the beast but the carpet salesman who had been on his way out reported seeing the carpet rise into the air and that  Stuyvesant went into some sort of trance. He claimed Stuyvesant rode the carpet out the window and into the night. Stuyvesant gave up monster hunting in 1992. His last contribution to the field was to caution that only those “dead at heart” attempt to hunt Yaramaz as anyone else could easily fall prey to their sympathetic lures.  Stuyvesant  moved upstate and opened a chocolate shop which to this day he operates with his son.

-END-

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