by Julian Miles | Sep 1, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Someone scorched words into the blacktop of this car park. Don’t know what all of them mean, don’t know what they used, but it went deep and left the surfaces glassy.
Cease, ye chariots
End thy noxious vapours
Quiet thy steely clamour
Still the wheels at last.
Cease! Ye chariots
Let cracks claim thy ways
For blooms to rise anew.
Cease, ye rolling cages
Release us all
To live.
My Da told me about them, as his Ma told him. Nobody knows when the words were cut. Elda Harold says it was during the oil wars, when great armies fought to save the us from the same things that powered them. Biddy Mac says it was written by a witch as a curse upon the chariots, but Da says she’s a witch too, and is just talking up her myth.
Sylvan says it musta been near the end, because thems what owned this place would’ve had the letters filled in, which makes sense to me.
“Danny, can we go? I’m bored.”
“Hush you, Mikey. Danny’s thinking.”
I grin at Mike and Annie.
“Not long now. Just wait.”
They go back to playful bickering. I look about. This place is huge. So big I can’t see our planting beds and water traps from here. Scurry Jo says there are two other groups settled around the edges of this place, and the remains of a fourth camp at the northernmost end. She worries about what made them quit. I think if it was a pack, we would’ve been attacked by now.
Da says the packs are dying out. They turn on each other too much. Bo Blades agrees, and he should know – he used to run with one before it froze out two winters back.
Winter is the worst time. This all started in winter, the really bad one, back when dead great-great-great-grandma was a kid. There were winter storms like never before or since, the sun threw something big at us – I still don’t understand that. It set off or woke up – I’m not clear about that, either – Supremp, which was something really bad that lived in lots of places in the sky. Sorta like a pack gone rogue up there?
Anyway, all of that made things down here change. Come to think about it, must’ve happened soon after these words got cut. Now there’s a thing. Maybe Biddy and her curse ain’t too far off after all.
“What’s that?”
I look up. It’s right on sundown, and the thing Mike is pointing at is what I brought them to see. Just the once, because there ain’t nothing like a first time.
Against the darkening sky above, something flickers. Closer to us than the clouds, but high off the ground, the flickers become shaking black and white blocks. Then, with a grey flash, it appears. Mike screams. Annie gasps.
Great round ears atop a big-eyed head, with baggy pants held up over a pot belly by chequered braces. Skinny legs fade from view before showing feet or reaching the ground. Struck me as menacing first time I saw it. Still does. There are coloured flashes circling it’s waist. Ma said those used to be words, but they done wore out. I’m not so sure.
Moments later, it fades away until next year.
“Why was that?”
I look down at Annie.
“We’ll never know. Not to worry, because it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Mike pulls on my trouser leg.
“Don’t like rat in the sky. We go now.”
Thinking about chariots and rats, I take the kids home.
by submission | Aug 31, 2025 | Story |
Author: Joy Dillon
Who gets paid to have free food and drink, accommodation and all-expenses paid every day? Me, that’s who; Ms. Lee Werther, hotel critic extraordinaire. With just a stroke of my pen or a touch of my keyboard, I either make or break establishments. I’ve done it before to countless hotels, motels and ‘bed and breakfast’ entities. And why shouldn’t I? It’s not easy trying to be perfect.
Today started off pretty routine. I sauntered out of bed, threw the curtain sash apart and opened my room window, and gazed in sheer amazement at the glowing ball in the sky.
The surrounding view was just as magnificent! There was a seamless swath of lush green that transitioned into a horizon of equally intriguing blue as far as the eye could have seen.
The air smelled so crisp and clean, that it felt like such a shame to have to close the window once again. So you know what? I decided to leave it open and have breakfast on my room’s balcony.
A brief, quick call to the front desk, prompted an almost-immediate response of ‘Yes, Ms. Werther’, followed by a knock at my front door.
When I opened it, a smiling, sharply dressed server presented me with a sparkling, silver covered platter. ‘Breakfast as requested, Ms. Werther.’
‘Thank you very much.’ I replied, before exchanging a small tip for a large breakfast. What a feast! My balcony breakfast was pure bliss, comprising an amazing assortment of fresh fruit, hearty, flaked, buttery pastries, juice flavoured just right and coffee that was brewed to optimum enjoyment. What could have topped that? Maybe a quick swim in the pool, if I cared for such.
As I reflected on my notes about this particular place, I couldn’t help but notice something rather interesting. Maybe it was the fact that my eyes were losing their strength, or maybe I was letting my imagination run too far and wide in my spare time…but the staff in this place seemed to work round-the-clock!
I first noticed it when I interacted with the receptionist. Initially, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. However, the very next day that I spoke to someone at the front desk, she was there again! Maybe it was a coincidence. However, when I went there a third consecutive time, she was again right there, looking as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as when we first met!
I observed a similar situation during my subsequent rapport with the luggage porter, the elevator operator, the room attendants, and even the guests! Everybody seemed to look the same, exact way. Then again, maybe I had too much of that funny-tasting alcohol the night before. I decided to sleep it off.
However, when I awakened the next day– today, something still felt really off. Before I knew it, I felt woozy, as though I had been through a series of intense exercises. That’s when I decided to skip breakfast, if only because I felt that perhaps, I needed some extra rest.
When next I awoke, it was to the sound of loud buzzing outside my balcony window, like that of an imminent train. ‘What the hell?’
I was damn scared, but still as curious as a cat. I decided to quietly inch my way to my balcony window and take a quick glance. Surely, there had to be some plausible explanation for this exceptional noise!
I wish I hadn’t done that. For looking back at me, instead of what I thought was the glowing sun, was the bright pupil of a large, blinking eye.
by submission | Aug 30, 2025 | Story |
Author: Peter Trelay
As he approached the hollow, he began to feel sick, and crouched on the ground in the shade of a boulder attempting to breathe. The wave amplitudes in his hybrid unit were cancelling each other out, forcing his system to the point of collapse. His synthetic and organic centres were at war. The lack of synchronicity between their wavebands, was approaching the point where the troughs and crests were almost opposite one another. Before passing out, the Quantum’s spy experienced the most terrifying episode of his short life; the sudden and total disintegration of his psyche.
He tumbled into the depths of his own interior. Through a dense fog he moved toward the only light he could see. Drawing closer, he found its source at the end of a long passage, and as he walked towards it, was convinced he had died. But at the end, he spilled into a spherical room, and floated towards its centre, surrounded by a million, brightly-coloured, vector graphics of intricate geometric shapes. It reminded him of a million code fragments in a collage. They were shimmering in iridescent rainbows expressing all manner of relation with wavebands of light.
Raising his arm towards the curved wall, he was propelled towards it, and touched one of the shapes with his index finger. For a moment, he was transported, speeding between two planes with multi-coloured lights streaking passed him, until he came to an abrupt halt, and found himself in a forest. Beneath his feet was a spongy mattress of thick moss that muffled the sound of two bob cats wrangling over a raccoon carcass a few metres from him. In an instant, he understood that he had finally managed to enter that secret place in his organic network that housed his human donor’s memories. Until then, he’d remained mostly indifferent, and occasionally hostile to his donor, who had caused him so much anxiety.
When he came to, he stood up and stepped away from the boulder, then turned to look back at the spot where he’d collapsed, expecting to see himself there on the ground. He was convinced that his persona had abandoned him, but felt strangely serene. Like his Quantum Master, he was now without a centre, but his psyche was following the thread of an infinite tapestry, and intuition told him that he could trust it to navigate by. It seemed that without his participation, his opposing sides had merged, granting him the insight to perceive the interconnectedness of things, and extinguishing his fear of the abyss. Then, like lightning striking twice, he suspected that his donor had seized the opportunity of his system’s collapse to infiltrate it. But where was the donor? He was conscious of talking to himself. He stood looking down at his torso, and turned up his palms, to see that outwardly, he was unchanged.
For a moment, he felt like a child enthralled by a magic trick, but was soon struck by the profound sense that he was an unwitting participant in a hallowed ceremony. The uncanny sleight of hand, had connected him to an immutable essence that would persist beyond the destruction of the shell that housed it.
A pervasive calm possessed him, and he understood that it came from a source far beyond his strange mortal coil. It was omnipresent and palpable, but beyond definition, just as it was beyond good and evil. It was infused in every particle, no matter how small; unaffected by time and space. He had been touched by divinity, and the lonely spy felt indebted and awed to have stumbled upon it.
by submission | Aug 29, 2025 | Story |
Author: Amanda Marcotte
I feel better now that I am smaller. I am much lighter on my feet. Actually, I don’t have feet anymore. But I figure no pain, no gain!
My fitness journey started after Christmas. I was feeling gross filled to the brim with pie and and chocolate.
So I needed to shrink.
The problem was my husband didn’t understand. He liked me big, a giant.
I figure I could still stand to lose some. I mean have you seen Kim Kardashian lately? She is positively tiny. I fit into the ‘micro’ Versace line. But I want to be just like her and fit ‘nano.’
I think if I could just get to that size I would finally be happy.
But I am doing GREAT. I mean, have you seen my before and after pictures?
My daughter doesn’t live with me anymore. She lives with her dad. I am too small to cook for her and do her giant laundry. She almost stepped on me once and that was when my husband decided they were moving out.
I think they would feel so much better if they lost some weight too.
At one point my gym was a q-tip that I used as a bench press. A nail clipper is a pretty good leg press. I do laps around the tub but I always keep the drain CLOSED.
My husband can’t see me anymore when he brings my daughter for her visit.
They stand at the door and say hello because they are afraid to step on me.
Sigh. I guess there are some things I miss. Like wrapping my arms around my daughter. I didn’t think I would miss vacuuming, but I do. I remember when I wasn’t afraid of ants. Now, I’m terrified.
Before I got too small for my husband to see me, he did try to help me. He’d take me to my appointments in his pocket. I’d wear the cutest tiny outfit to see if he would notice – a flowy blouse, a pencil skirt, and microscopic red kitten heels – and just think if only I was smaller maybe I could win him back.
My husband isn’t sure if I still exist because there’s no way he can find me in the house. I’m a needle in a haystack. The other day he shouted through the house so I could hear he is filing for divorce.
I am very small now. But not small enough. So I decided to become sub-atomic.
Your house doesn’t get dirty when you are sub-atomic. A piece of dust is a planet. The things that live in the dust are fearsome. Pretty gross. It is hard to keep my eye on electrons which appear and disappear. I am starting to see some strings.
But it is mostly empty here.
When nobody knows if you exist, you question whether you do indeed exist. Before my fitness journey I used to feel very small and invisible — now I really am.
I have more energy now that I am smaller. In fact, I am pure energy. My strings are vibrating so fast I can’t even see them anymore. How am I writing this, even? Can a particle put pen to paper? Your brain gets a little funny when it’s just strings.
And then just one string.
Now the string gets taut.
Snap.
by submission | Aug 28, 2025 | Story |
Author: Heather Heasman
Ruth, Frank, Eileen and Roger were excited for their road trip.
They couldn’t wait for the journey to begin but now, it was not going well. Not at all.
“Stop the car!” Ruth’s shout sliced through the car’s sweat-stained air.
“Now!!” she screamed.
Roger was slumped over. Frank glared into the rearview and accelerated. Eileen murmured nonsense.
Roger is moving but not fluidly. His movements are like those of a wind-up toy – jerk, pause, stop. Seconds pass, the pattern repeats. Ruth wonders who is winding up this man-toy in the front seat.
Frank is smiling.
Eileen’s terror filled eyes mirror Ruth’s.
The car left the highway. The hum of the road is replaced with a cacophony of banging as dust rises and branches claw at the vehicle.
Ruth notices that Eileen is lifeless beside her. Frozen, Ruth felt like a caged animal. Little did she know, she was.
“It’s okay Ruthie,” Frank said, “You’ll see.”
Eileen, twitching, reached for Ruth repeating, “You’ll see. It’s beautiful.”
They reached a clearing.
Frank opened Ruth’s door, “Ruthie, we’re done here. It’s time to go home.”
Ruth inhaled sharply; her memory returning. Had she been trying to get to where she had always been?
Then it struck: a pulse so strong that it short-circuited her. To an observer, she appeared unconscious, but as her system rebooted she was anything but. She saw it. The data she had gathered and the seeds she had sown appeared like aurora across the night sky perpetuating the work.
She was moving with the others. In a flash of light, they disappeared.
The farmer stood on his tractor. Lightning? On such a calm day? He sensed the presence and knew he was surrounded.
“Come,” said the voice. “It’s your turn and we have work to do.”
by submission | Aug 27, 2025 | Story |
Author: Colin Jeffrey
The letter was printed on heavy cream paper, wrinkled to look like parchment. It was edged in gold leaf, sealed with a wax stamp from The Church of the Divine World Government.
Clem Dreckle, who had led a perfectly average life of punctuality and mediocrity, opened the letter with caution. Though he rarely interacted with the church since its merger with the government (other than paying his tax tithes every year), he never liked receiving official letters.
He read aloud:
“Dear Clem Y. Dreckle,
Congratulations! You have been chosen.
Our sacred AI has selected you as one of this week’s Devout Combustible Offerings. Your piety, mediocrity, and slavish obedience have not gone unnoticed.
This Friday at 10:00 a.m., please report to the Temple of Divine Immolation for your ascent to heaven at 10:30 a.m. sharp. Please wear loose, combustible clothing. A light breakfast is recommended.
May you rise straight up.
Yours in God and bureaucracy,
The Department of Divine Ascent”
Clem put the letter down, cleaned his glasses, then reread it. It still made no sense. However, as a faithful Class 7b Algorithmic Experience Curator, he wasn’t one to question official directives.
He booked Friday off with minimal resistance from his employer – they even sent him a cake with his name on it (though they spelled it “Clam”).
By Thursday night, Clem had selected his most flammable trousers and a polyester business shirt the salesman had called “ascension efficient.”
At exactly 10:00 a.m. on Friday, Clem arrived at the Temple. The receptionist greeted him with a smile.
“Oh, Mr. Dreckle! It’s an honor. Please, have a seat in the Waiting Area. Coffee? Alcohol? Morphine?”
He declined, feeling pious. The room was warm, with a strange smell of kerosene and strawberry incense.
At 10:28 a.m., an ethereal voice from a loudspeaker called him in. The chamber looked like a mix between a cathedral and a post office: stained glass windows illuminated by fluorescent lights bathed polished wooden benches in artificial rainbows, while a single spotlight shone on a gleaming titanium dais inside a fireproof glass booth.
A technician in a suit and robes handed Clem a clipboard with a sheath of papers on it.
“These are your departure documents. Just sign here. The AI has already sanctified your name.”
Clem hesitated. “Departure?”
The technician smiled. “In a manner of speaking. You’re leaving this earthly plane as one of the chosen.”
As he signed, the technician took his glasses and folded them into a fireproof pouch. “For your next of kin,” he said.
Clem stepped onto the dais.
—
He opened his eyes. He wasn’t burned, not even singed. He was lying in what looked like a hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown. The room was bright and sterile. A man in a lab coat entered, looking at an electronic device in his hand.
“Hello, Clem,” he said.
Clem stared at the man. “Is this heaven?”
The man smiled, looked at him briefly. “No, sorry to disappoint. You’re very much alive, I’m afraid.”
Clem sat up. “So where am I?”
“Think of it as a place for sorting out inefficiencies. You, Clem, are officially classified as Deadwood.”
“Deadwood?”
“Yes. Useless. Inadequate. Not really contributing to humanity’s betterment. We’re removing Deadwood from circulation. Not with immolation, but with redistribution. We’re not murderers, you know.”
Clem frowned. “Redistribution? To where?”
“Oh, you know – off-world maintenance, planet terraforming, asteroid mining. You’ll live. You’ll be useful. Just never seen on Earth again.”
Clem stared blankly. “Wait… So, I’ve been exiled?”
“Redistributed,” the man corrected. “Efficiently. On a rocket… rising straight up.”
