She was just here a moment ago, round chin on his shoulder, her laugh low in his ear, fingers brushing his arm. But Bill blinks, and everything changes in an instant, over the course of ten years. He’s still got blue eyes and curl to his hair, and it’s August, sky swearing-blue and without a […]
Oberon Officer’s Log. Day 10227 This is ridiculous. If we were still at full crew I wouldn’t even be an officer. Also, this isn’t a real log. We are drifting along in the great void of space so there is nothing to report, and even if there were, OOMA would report it for me. At […]
The gods will mock. Give them an opening, a chink in your facade of self-importance, and they’ll slide their spears of mockery into your heart. Or at least into your inflated ego. Sometimes the jibes came in the form of rain. Thick, heavy drops on a land in desperate need of water. A blessing more […]
Good morning, Marple Township, it’s time for the weather. It’s going to be a warm seventy-two degrees in comparison to yesterday’s rainy fifties. Gonna be a sunny one! I change into an old band t-shirt from my concert phase, jeans, and flip-flops and then trek down to the mailbox with my paid bills and notated […]
by Bogi Takács To R, who made it possible I. The Battlefield Aniyé staggered, the impossible landscape of corpses and detritus swaying around her, bending over her. Pushing her down. All around her, the proud crimson uniforms were stamped into the soil, stained with blood and clumps of gore. She tried to breathe, tried […]
Kiat hovered anxiously around the workbench as the techman carefully put the cellphone back together, reassembling wiring and its microboard, its flat paper-thin glass surface separated into two folds. In the techman’s gray eyes, the magnification implants scrolled data directly into her field of vision, visible to Kiat only as faint white lines that etched […]
One August evening, in a mix of grief and hope, Lara Jane Hudson accidentally opens the portal to Hell. It takes her two and half days to fully realise this has happened: that there is a slightly shimmery, raised-edge circle on the floor of her basement storage room, with a suspicious crust on top like […]
The tense conversation stopped when Lydia slipped into the office, trailing the stench of old blood, ocean brine, and the cheap cigars favored by London’s Watch. The sudden heat and light from the crackling fire struck her like a blow. For one dizzying moment, the room’s familiar bookshelves and battle maps blurred with the seated […]
Part I Vesta hates the noise of the rib separator, the crack of bone and grind of cogs. Fingers rinsed with hot blood, she twists the separator once more and locks it into place. The man’s skin wrinkles around the steel claws. She can see his heart. The atrophied muscle is ugly, twisted, beating an […]
Part One My real name is gone, so far in the distance that the thought of it coming up fast behind me seems an impossibility. Age, however, has displayed no such qualms; it has pounced, shaking me between its teeth, until my skin sags and my gums flap. But I have decided to not dwell […]