We’ve all known each other for a long time, since the beginning, and a little while before that. We’ve worked on this assembly line for all of our corporeal lives, and it pleases us to do so. I stamp another… Continue Reading
The iron sat squarely in the middle of Sally’s table. She stared at it, forehead creasing, then dropped her groceries and ran around the house, checking windows and doors. No one else was there and things seemed as secure as… Continue Reading
In class today, two guest speakers, a Republican and a Democrat, contradict each other for the whole period and leave us with a pile of campaign buttons. I take the President Nixon. Now more than ever. button because it looks… Continue Reading
My mother keeps a jar of Loneliness in the cupboard: top right hand corner, next to the packet of Seething Resentment; both are past their sell by dates, both hardened and crystallized in the suffocating air. I beg her to… Continue Reading
I’ve chosen sugar cookies for Jackson’s scent reminder. Most people chose something from nature. Pine trees. Roses. The petrichor aroma after rain. But Jackson told me the smell of baking sugar cookies meant home. Lying there in his stasis pod,… Continue Reading
Beth fingered the fresh bruises that ringed her neck. The pain, which responded to each prod, was soothing in its reliability. “What was different about yesterday, Beth?” asked the doctor sitting in the vinyl-covered visitor’s chair that faced her bed.… Continue Reading
I protect Isaac. That is my purpose. The blizzard has let up somewhat since I left camp. It is still too heavy for anything organic to risk being outside, but that is no obstacle to me. Ahead, I can see… Continue Reading
“Mr. Stanley, our scriptwriter has come down with writer’s block.” George Stanley scratched at the wry white and silver hairs that stuck out on the back of his head. “But it’s a computer. Shouldn’t you get a programmer?” Across from… Continue Reading
“Coming to bed, love?” Kate looked into the other room. Darren was wearing the pyjamas he’d bought specially for the honeymoon, with blue and yellow stripes. It was almost midnight, but it was still warm inside the villa. The ceiling… Continue Reading
Stars emerged beyond darkening skies over the Shenandoah forest. Though we’d just arrived at the campsite, Alex and Kevin insisted we build a fire straightaways. Fire assuaged ancient fears of tooth and claw buried in the lizard-brain and their grandfather’s… Continue Reading