Release date: October 29, 2019
Subgenre: Paranormal fantasy
About Carpe Glitter:
A novelette from Cat Rambo, author of The Tabat Quartet. What
do you do when someone else's past forces itself on your own life?
Sorting through the piles left behind by a grandmother who was both a
stage magician and a hoarder, Persephone Aim finds a magical artifact
from World War II that has shaped her family history. Faced with her
mother's desperate attempt to take the artifact for herself, Persephone
must decide whether to hold onto the past--or use it to reshape her
future.
Excerpt:
Carpe glitter, my grandmother Gloria always said. Seize the glitter.
And that was what I remembered best about her, the glitter: a
dazzle of rhinestone, a waft of Patou Joy, lipstick like a red
banner across her mouth. Underneath all that, a wiry little old
lady with silver hair and vampire-pale skin.
Not that she was a vampire, of course. But Gloria Aim hung with
everyone who was anyone during her days in the Vegas crowd.
Celebrities, presidents, journalists, they all came to her show at
the Sparkle Dome, watched her strut her stuff in a black top hat
and fishnet stockings, conjuring flames and doves (never card
tricks, which she hated), making ghosts speak to loved ones in the
audience. And when she stepped off the stage, she left in a
scintillating dazzle, like a fairy queen stepping off her throne.
All that shine. And at home?
She was a grubby hoarder.
I mopped sweat off my forehead with the hem of my T-shirt and
attacked another pile of magazines. Dust wafted up to fill my
nostrils and make me sneeze, drifted down to coat the hairs on my
forearms with grit. Something had rotted in the corner; I was doing
that side once I’d cleared a path to it and breathing through my
mouth in the meantime.
This had once been intended as a guest room, but it had been taken
over by a troupe of china-headed dolls, stacked atop piles of
brittle newspapers and magazines. No cat pee—I’d been spared that
in these back rooms, closed off for at least a couple of decades.
Grandmother had bought the house when she was at the height of her
first fortune. She’d just burst onto the stage magician scene, a
woman from Brooklyn who’d trained herself in sleight of hand and
studied under the most famous female stage magician of her time,
Susan Day.
The nearest heap of magazines, in fact, flaking away at my touch,
showed Grandmother and her mentor on the uppermost cover, a poster
from their brief tour together, just after World War II. Glamorous
older Day, blonde hair worn in a sleek chignon and eyes blue as
turquoise. Grandmother bright and shiny not just from the
rhinestones glittering across her chest, but starry-eyed—her grin
so wide it stretched her mouth.
The stack held dozens of copies of the same issue, no matter how
far down I went. A swarm of silverfish scurried away as I lifted
the last one. I’d get the room cleared before bringing out my
arsenal of bug spray for an onslaught.
Yellowed confetti bits fell away as I put the stack on the heap to
be bagged up and trashed. By now I’d learned that paper flaking
that badly meant the appraiser’s regretful headshake and the
murmur, “Too badly eroded, Miss Aim.”
As with each of the seven rooms I’d managed so far, I sorted the
contents into piles. Throw away was by far the largest. To be
appraised had interesting things in it beyond the scads of dolls
Grandmother had collected. Keep was actually two subpiles, one for
Mother and one for me.
Object after object to be evaluated and sorted. Old magazines and
flutters of candy wrappers. So much clothing, most of it absurdly
formal, scratchy with ancient starch. Theater props piled on top of
grab bags she’d picked up at church rummage sales, still unopened.
Half-filled perfume bottles and compacts full of sweet dust.
And then there were oddities: a picture stitched of human hair,
showing a castle on a cliff; an enormous crystal ball, a good foot
and a half wide; a mechanical banjo trio that played itself,
complete with a library of antebellum songs to choose from; a
basket stuffed with sandalwood fans.
The “rotting thing” turned out to be a heap of furs that, when
stirred, sent up a stench reminiscent of old sauerkraut that sent
me out into the hallway for a while to lean against the yellowing
wallpaper and breathe in fresher air.
The doll collection was worth a good bit, perhaps, I’d been told.
But nothing on the scale of financial windfall I had hoped for.
Grandmother had been wealthy, even though she kept her spending
discreet, aside from this strange mishmash of a house. Where had
all that money gone?
And why had she saved everything? I thought that it was perhaps a
return to her childhood days, which had been uncertain and full of
moves. My great-grandfather had been a con man, always on the edge
of getting run out of town, according to her stories. They’d had to
leave in the middle of the night more than once, abandoning
anything that couldn’t go into a suitcase. This could be a reaction
to that.
There was no point psychoanalyzing my dead grandmother, though.
Once the furs were bagged up and taken out, the room was much more
bearable. I kept on searching, working through the last of the
piles before examining the desiccated rug underneath, so dry I was
worried it might crumble away if I tried to vacuum it.
My cell vibrated against my hip. I slid it out of my shorts pocket
and glanced at the screen. My mother.
I took a breath before thumbing the phone on. “Yes?” I said.
“I wish you hadn’t chosen this,” Mother said, launching right back
into the same argument we’d been having all week, ever since I’d
said, “Actually, I’ll take the second option” at the reading of the
will. “It’s ridiculous. You could probably tell them that you’ve
changed your mind, that you want the money instead.”
“You never know, I might turn up something wonderful,” I said,
trying a new tack. Maybe if I could convince her that there might
be treasure buried in the piles and heaps lining this massive
amalgamation of three houses, she’d support me in this.
She hissed impatience. At least that’s what that strangled sound
had always meant for both her and Grandmother. Mother liked to
pretend she was Grandmother’s antithesis, but the truth was, they
were more alike than either would have admitted. I had even found a
mannerism or two I didn’t think of as mine, but theirs, creeping
into my own speech. “Have you found anything?” she demanded.
“Not yet,” I said. “But I’ve only begun to scratch the surface. You
have no idea how much stuff she managed to cram into this place.
It’s a little mind-blowing.” I toed at the pile I’d been sorting,
and it slid sideways with a waft of cedar and old socks that almost
made me gag.
“Why are you being so stubborn about this, Persephone?”
“I’m thirty years old. I get to make my own choices. Grandmother
offered them to me.” I hesitated before adding, “It’s not your
call,” feeling the words slide distance between us when my mother
was already so far away.
She hung up without a word. I stared at “Connection terminated”
before wiping at my face again, tasting salt on my lips. I was
sweating up a storm in this fierce heat. That’s all it was.
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About Cat Rambo:
Nebula, World Fantasy, and Endeavour award nominee Cat Rambo's
published work includes 200+ stories, two novels, five collections,
a cookbook, a travel guide, and two books for writers, Moving from
Idea to Draft and Creating an Online Presence for Writers. She runs
The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers live and
on-demand online writing classes aimed at speculative fiction
writers. She is a two-term President of the The Science Fiction
& Fantasy Writers of America. Find links and more information
at www.kittyrumpus.net
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About Meerkat Press:
Meerkat Press is an independent publisher committed to finding and
publishing exceptional, irresistible, unforgettable fiction. And despite
the previous sentence, we frown on overuse of adjectives and adverbs in
submissions. *smile*
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