Rise Up

Rise Up collects two dozen short stories that span nearly thirty years of C.S. Fuqua's career, featuring ghosts and faeries, the macabre and mundane, rich and poor, and distraught and jubilant. From the dark fantasy of "Rise Up" and science fiction comedy of "The Garbler" to the science fiction satire of "Big Daddy's Fast-Past Gadget," each story in Rise Up explores the motivations, actions, and consequences that force ordinary people to become extraordinary. Rise Up's stories intertwine good and evil and how we waver between condemnation and redemption: the cold-heartedness of a president in "All the Brave Soldiers," the pity of a ghostly girl for a dying general in "Grace," modern society's propensity for foolish restrictions in "The Addict." The title piece, "Rise Up," explores second chances when a mandolin player uses music to resurrect his fiancee following her tragic death, only to bear even greater tragedy in the long run. In "Demons," an Iraqi War veteran suffering PTSD mines the depths of compassion when he befriends a phooka, tortured and starved to the brink of insanity. Evil comes in many guises, from the man who saves children from life's heartaches, to the mechanic who grossly overcharges clients for unneeded repairs, to the politicians who deceive countries into war to torture and maim in the name of a plethora of gods. Sometimes we recognize evil's approach; sometimes we don't. Rise Up explores the consequences.