"Larry's Shrine" is a surreal fantasy in which the power of a shrine is used for selfish ends.
Look for it this fall from Albedo One Magazine.
Larry takes no pictures today.
The noise from the street is distracting. Hockey fans smash store windows below his studio. Sirens blare in the distance, unfocussed alarms, innocuous and unheeded. A bowl of exotic fruit spoils under the lights before him. He watches the fuzz on the kiwis dry out and curl up. The drops of water that he sprayed on the starfruit trickle into its crevices. He stares at this tableau intently but does not lift his camera to his eye.
Larry has not snapped a photo in four hundred and forty-five days. The loss of his art and livelihood was sudden and complete, like an amputation. He woke one morning and the daylight was grey. Through his camera he saw only bad compositions and fakery, nothing worth wasting film over. Even the essentially dull product shots were somehow wrong. The angles were awkward. The light unreal. Work dried up. Larry stopped carrying his camera. Looking through the lens had become a torment.
Book Two of The Jade Owl Legacy Series: The quest continues as the Professor and his confidants discover the full weight of their mission and acquire supernatural powers to further heir success.
