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Short stories, offering glimpses into different realities.

The Night is Halloween, Madeleine

Madeleine stalks through the streets of London, her net transmitting a careful stream of instructions, left here and right now. The voice of her AI is Bowie, his proper Britishness soothing, with a hint of the devilry she’d heard in her Thomm’s voice, so many years ago she’d forgotten.

2023-10-29T17:07:41-05:00October 29th, 2023|Fiction, Issue #13, Stories|0 Comments

How to Say Goodbye

“We’re close to departure, ma’am.” How easy it would be to hide my emotional anxiety behind protocol and procedure, to blame the intellectual rigor of exploration for my emotional detachment. From the trees that line the field’s edge, the whirligigs screech and hoot. They crowd the branches below their nests and skitter in the light of our transport vehicles. The fleet of shuttles blaze like a star cluster in the twilight. The throbbing hum from the propulsion systems has set the gigs on edge.

2023-10-31T16:47:49-05:00October 29th, 2023|Fiction, Issue #13, Stories|0 Comments

We Turn Out Okay

I woke, curled and alone on a rumbling dark bus, remembering someone I’d done my best to forget. Remembering the Other Me. It had been a long, cold day. A double-socks, leggings-under-jeans kind of day. You couldn’t stay outside more than a few minutes without feeling like you’d lose some extremity or patch of skin to the cold. I was running away from home.

2023-10-29T17:07:29-05:00October 29th, 2023|Fiction, Issue #13, Stories|0 Comments

Wish You Were Here

There are snowmen in the desert. Two lines of them, in fact, flanking the bandstand and continuing behind it, although I can’t make out how many linger back there. I doubt the world of Berrion has seen many snowmen in its time. It’s hot as hell here even at the high latitude of the northern continent. The land at the equator? Intolerable for humans.

2023-10-31T16:55:12-05:00October 29th, 2023|Fiction, Issue #13, Stories|0 Comments

Visualizing Reality

A woman. Warmth. Love. Just out of reach. The back of my neck. Itching. Burning. A sudden change—the ground shifting beneath my feet, catapulting up, up, up. Clawing at my neck. Searing. An inferno. Slipping backward, falling, tumbling. The woman, her hand outstretched. Too late. Too far. Gone. I yell out her name. Darkness. “Richie? Richie, wake up!”

2023-11-01T11:00:06-05:00October 29th, 2023|Fiction, Issue #13, Stories|0 Comments

Diamond Tear

“STAY OFF GROOMED SURFACES” headlined the resurfacing status page as I skimmed alongside the track groomer, staying well clear of the hundred meter booms snowing frozen nitrogen onto the drag strip. Cockpit audio whooped, startling me ...

2023-03-25T18:29:49-05:00March 20th, 2023|Fiction, Issue #12, Stories|0 Comments

Road Trip

A six-foot brown Indian man, with one blue eye, one nostril, full lips, and dishwater blond wispy hair, is dressed in denim jeans and shirt. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow, exposing blond hair on his peach-colored forearms. Cracked, leather-topped, diner stools separate him and another man from each other and from me.

2023-03-22T13:34:30-05:00March 20th, 2023|Fiction, Issue #12, Stories|0 Comments

Born in ’84

I met February-22 on the day of April-14’s execution. On the silver screen, the fifteen-year-old boy faced six rifles pointed at the skies. He stood in front of a roughcast wall, dressed in white shirt and woolen trousers, like a prisoner of the regime that had collapsed.

2023-03-27T10:54:51-05:00March 20th, 2023|Fiction, Issue #12, Stories|0 Comments
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