By Michael T. Schaper
He never thought he’d make it here. Not after all the things he’s done to annoy both men and gods.
As the mist around him disperses, Brok the Berserker stares at the building in front of him. It is huge, far bigger than ever he expected. The wooden entrance doors soar upwards, whilst the building stretches back out of sight.
There’s noise and warmth inside, beckoning. He can hear them singing and chanting, vast hordes of fallen warriors and shield maidens enjoying themselves.
He can’t believe his good fortune. And this, despite so many times he’s angered all the different gods. Challenged them, forsaken them, fought them, even killed one or two.
So much for their swearing lasting revenge on him, the ultimate outsider in this society.
Somehow, he’s made it here. Brok swaggers in, the realisation growing that he has a place here until the end of time. He might always have been different to the other Norsemen, but now he’s part of the chosen. Forever.
Brok makes his way to the dining tables. “Food!” he demands of a passing serving thrall, greedily. Being reborn into the eternal afterlife certainly makes a warrior hungry.
“Can you not give me a meal?” He pushes aside the rack of bloody cooked ribs and offal in front of him, gestures for a fresh plate to be set down. “Something better than that?”
The thrall eyes him dispassionately. “But it’s what we always serve, sire. As the gods laid down when they created this Valhalla. The same every day. Fine meat for fine warriors.”
And he a vegetarian.
About the Author
Dr. Michael Schaper
Where you see strange dreams, cockatoos and other nonsensical nostrums congregate, there’s a good chance you’ll also come across our author.
By day he’s all manner of mundane things: a board member, business association manager, policy adviser, researcher and scholar - in Canberra.
At night he lets those wild ideas of his run, well, wild.
Ion Newcombe is the editor and publisher of AntipodeanSF, Australia’s longest running online speculative fiction magazine, regularly issued since January 1998, and conceived back around November 2007. He has been a zealous reader and occasional writer of SF since his childhood in the 1960s, and even sold a few stories here and there back in the '90s.
Mark Webb's midlife crisis came in the form of attempting to write speculative fiction at a very slow pace. His wife maintains this is a good outcome considering the more expensive and cliched alternatives. Evidence of Mark's attempts to procrastinate in his writing, including general musings and reviews of books he has been reading, can be found at www.markwebb.name.
Ed lives with his wife plus a magical assortment of native animals in tropical North Queensland.
Sarah Pratt is an avid fiction writer and a Marketing Consultant.
Garry Dean lives on the Mid Coast of New South Wales Australia, and has been a fan of SF for most of his natural life. Being vision impaired, he makes good use of voice recognition and text to speech in order to write. Many of his stories have appeared in AntipodeanSF over the years, and his love of all things audio led him to join the narration team in 2017.
Pixie is a voice actor, cabaret performer & slam poet From the Blue Mountains in NSW.
Timothy Gwyn is a professional pilot in Canada, where he flies to remote communities. During a lull in his flying career, he was a radio announcer for three years, and he is also an author.
Geraldine Borella writes adult short stories and stories for children and has been published in anthologies for both. In 2018, one of her children’s short stories placed second in The Buzz Words Short Story Prize and she won an ASA Emerging Writer’s Mentorship. She currently works part-time as a hospital pharmacist and as an online creative writing tutor.
Mark is an astrophysicist and space scientist who worked on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Following this he worked in computer consultancy, engineering, and high energy research (with a stint at the JET Fusion Torus).
Margaret lives the good life on a small piece of rural New South Wales Australia, with an amazing man, a couple of pets, and several rambunctious wombats.
Laurie Bell lives in Melbourne, Australia. She was that girl you found with her nose always buried in a book. She has been writing ever since she was a little girl and first picked up a pen. From books to short stories, radio plays to snippets of ideas and reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.
Diana writes speculative fiction about weird people doing weird things.
Leon D Furze moved to Australia in 2009 and now lives on a farm in Western Victoria with his wife and three children.
Jon Michael Kelley is an internationally published author and novelist of literary speculative fiction.
Lynne Lumsden Green lives in Queensland, Australia, though – in reality – she lives inside her head (it’s cosy in there). She writes both fiction and nonfiction.
Col Hellmuth lives a quiet, uncomplicated life, off-grid in the Daintree rainforest of Far North Queensland.
PS Cottier is a poet who lives in Canberra, with a particular interest in speculative poetry.
Old enough to just remember the first manned Moon landing, Kevin was so impressed he made science his life.