“Evergreen and Always,” a 2008 holiday story by Alice M. Roelke

If you have the holiday spirit this year, you’ll probably enjoy “Evergreen and Always” (2008), a wonderfully touching short story by SF&F writer Alice M. Roelke that was published last December in the #49 issue of Ray Gun Revival (PDF, 6 MB!). Here are the opening lines of the story:

The phone rang. Bill Salle scrubbed the towel across his hair again and walked to the phone. The screen said it was long distance, from Mars. He slung the towel to the back of a chair across the room, pressed a button. “Hello?”

A face appeared on the screen, a tensed, lonely, rich, bloated white face. A man who worked long hours, slept little and worried plenty. The kind of man who could afford to hire the solar system’s best and most expensive messenger service. ...

Alice M. Roelke has also had her work published in Mindflights, The Sword Review and Dragons, Knights, and Angels. She maintains a blog called The Writing Life For Me and hates Wonderland jokes.