Always Forever Now in Ideomancer magazine

The summer issue of Ideomancer magazine has a story of mine, Always Forever Now. Editor Leah Bobet introduces it as a meditation on Christianity, polyamory, and sacrifice, which sums it up well! I share the summer Ideomancer with a story by Michael J. DeLuca, Virtual Goods, and some fine poems: I like the one by Sara Saab, Inheritance, Far From the Centre of the World.

Here's an excerpt from Always Forever Now:

Todd Calvin stands at the foot of Cindy and Elliot’s driveway, wondering what they’ll make of his boot camp souvenirs — twenty pounds of muscle and a stubbly scalp. Despite their late-night attempts to sway him, traditionalist Todd has withstood Cindy and Elliot’s progressive drift. It stings him that they disapprove of his enlistment; Cindy and Elliot are the closest thing to family Todd has known, his one constant through a lonely adolescence, and an adulthood of strict Christian self-denial. He thinks of his friends — with the faintest aftertaste of rue — as the perfect couple. 

So, stealing time to gather his nerve, Todd slows the day. A few minutes, at most an hour, and his eyes will water and his head will throb — and time will march on. When younger, Todd thought everyone played tug-of-war with the minutes, but no one spoke of it. As an adult Todd suspects only he can resist time, and only he is held back — time washing around him till he can fight no longer and is hurled into the present. 

If time tugged Todd through twenty-six years, two foster homes, state college, intermittent construction work, and a recent enlistment, he has been tugging back the whole way. Todd believes he is special only in this — and in being a better-than-average athlete. 

So he holds the day by the tail. Yellow tulips along the driveway blur. A dimming sun trembles in sweet agony. Whirring past Todd’s head, an early wasp slows, and stops, shivering. Todd sees the pixels of her eyes. The present will rush forward to meet him when he lets go, the driveway tulips jerking on their stems, the wasp hitting warp drive, the sun plummeting to the horizon. 

But only Todd will move. Todd will move, but not yet....
 
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(Above, that's our native Blue Flag Iris. We came upon it hiking around Cape May, NJ, which has pleasant trails to amble about on. If the flower suggests the trinitarian, then it neatly augurs the themes of my story!)