Down McLaren, right on First. Argh, I know this friggin’ bus route off by heart. Haunt a bus, they said; it’ll be fun, they said. Sure, it’s fun for late-night-thrills but the monotony is going to make me lose it.… Continue Reading
Five. The harness digs into his shoulder. Mission control keeps a stream of chatter in his ear, but Gagarin can hardly hear them over his pounding heart. The rocket shudders around him. Four. Humanity has always been entranced by the… Continue Reading
Mike Westover is dead, but his name still has power. Michelle shuts her apartment door, locks it, and takes a deep breath in the quiet of the dark kitchen. She slips out of her heels and secures them in their… Continue Reading
It crashed with incredible violence, clouds of pink sand blossoming as it imbedded itself into the seafloor. An Iron Oyster. On the reef, schools of technicolored fish fled, helter-skelter. Crabs and eels and sharks took cover. But the octopus was… Continue Reading
His mother wore oven mitts as she wrapped him in aluminum foil for his first day of school. She placed welding goggles over his eyes and smiled down at him. “Be yourself and try to make friends, okay, Billy?” Billy… Continue Reading
“Good evening, sir,” said the pale man in black coat at my front door. “Hello. You are…?” “Call me Mackey, sir.” “Ah, Mr. Mackey, you’re a day early,” I said, clutching my robe against the chill. “But come in, come… Continue Reading
We are hungry, so hungry we could eat the whole world. Everything smells like ketchup. We could eat the trees, we could eat the sun. The glass lights on the deck twinkle like little candy stars, and we could eat… Continue Reading
The story of the world is the story of the water and the stone. They were here before the plants and the creatures and it was their world. But they were not friends. The water was quick and curious, rushing… Continue Reading
Take a Credit and place your PocketBank™ back into its magnetic placeholder on the left side of your belt, then take off your tie. Let it float to the ground slowly before shattering into a miasma of colors on the… Continue Reading
He had been cut this bad once before. In the Central Highlands, a punji stick had jabbed him below the knee. It had gone in less than an inch, but the feces that the VC had smeared on it had… Continue Reading