Eye of the Beholder
Author: J. David Thayer I lay in my hospital bed with both arms crushed and my face and eyes cut to pieces. A loose timber from a logger swatted my Jeep into a drainage ditch. The accident should have killed me, but I survived. Didn’t feel like it. Well-meaning…
read moreTravels with Stacy
Author: R. J. Erbacher Another excursion. Another plane flight. Another jungle. He called Stacy his heedless girlfriend because she didn’t care what anybody thought. Probably not even him. She didn’t want vacations like your average girlfriend. Never a weekend in the…
read moreWhite Star
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer She slides the ornately embossed door aside and enters the first-class stall. It’s empty but for a man, he barely stirs as he reads aloud from a menu. “Calvados Glazed Roast Duck with Apple Sauce.” “William.” “Miss White.” The train…
read moreOne Minute
Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer The pavement shimmers gently in the afternoon heat. The baristas have been reduced to serving nothing but iced coffee. “944,013.” Alec looks up to see someone with a vaguely familiar face take the seat opposite, then a waft of cigarette…
read moreBungi
Author: David Henson I loved the house next door. She was a bungalow. I’m a brick ranch. I fell in love with her after becoming sentient though I don’t remember exactly when that was. Achieving self-awareness isn’t like flipping a switch. It’s more like gradually…
read moreTick Off
Author: DJ Lunan I know these are my earthquakes. My greed, guilt, and responsibility. Fair dues. But I am not learning a lesson. Earth is being terminated. With each tremor, our house groans like a war-weary galleon. Imperceptibly minute specks of rubble, wood dust,…
read moreIn Fire He Shall Rise
Author: Amanda Hard Scarlet and orange leaves, chips of autumnal tree paint, fell on dry grass as the phoenix in my bird bath lifted his tired eyes. “Damned,” he squawked, before flashing bright white, a blur of sparks and feathers of gray ash that floated to the…
read moreDreams
Author: Mishal Imaan Syed I woke to a ceiling gilded with stars. “She’s awake,” someone murmured. I rubbed the dreams from my eyes, trying to make out the fluttering form of someone. “Who are you?” I asked. “A creature of the night.” The voice was pure velvet and…
read moreHeliotropism
Author: Mandy Szewczuk We saw it coming, our apocalypse, through binoculars. It didn’t burn out our eyes, the way movies told us it would because it wasn’t a mushroom cloud or column of incandescent fire. What we saw, standing on top of our apartment building because…
read moreThe Breakdown
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The rain has given up falling in drops and now lambastes the windscreen in heavy punched lumps. The manic whip of the wipers suddenly stops and the engine dies and she eases the car, tempering the brake with her foot until the squeal…
read moreHigh Life
Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer To our right, there are five rows of aircars just hanging there. In addition, there are six layers below and five above. All sleek, shining, and not moving. “Look at it. Six by twelve, going nowhere.” Tish’s right. We picked the wrong…
read moreRuby
Author: Richard M. O’Donnell, Sr. To: Four-Eight-Nine From: You Know Subject: Last Request Dear FEN, Pour my ashes under the face-down headstone. You know the one. The one we pushed over that night and danced on, the one in the Last Woods on the forgotten farm we all…
read moreInhabiting Jolene
Author: Franco Amati It took nine dates for Jolene to let me inhabit her mind. With a woman as intriguing as her, it’s tempting to sneak in without permission. But trust me, it’s always more enjoyable with permission. I snuck into the head of the last girl I dated,…
read moreLife Sentence
Author: Marlin Bressi Souls don’t have asses, but the courtroom has wooden benches just the same because God likes it that way, likes things just so, and in His Infinite Wisdom has decided that this place ought to look like the set of a Perry Mason rerun. Like the…
read moreAwake Afterwards
Author: R. J. Erbacher I was oppressed by the constraint of the unyielding humidity and the dust which coated every inch of this installation despite the scrubbers working full time. Outside the dull sodium lights that lit up the hallway seeped in through gaps in the…
read morePlease, No More Space-Dog Walkers
Author: Delvon T. Mattingly For weeks, all I did was listen, my eyes closed. My body grew numb months ago, down to my fingers and toes, unable to recall the last time I saw my phalanges, or my body at that matter. But I wasn’t going to stop until I found my person,…
read moreApeth
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer Daena Nova stares through the recycled molecules in the air and laments that she hates flying even more than her pores do. But business is business and she has a man to meet. The schematics held on the flash-drive that’s wedged into…
read moreDiamonds and Thunder
Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer You can stalk the worlds like death incarnate, should you have the technology and the psychological issues necessary. You might even descend upon worlds in fire and fury in an attempt to become some sort of manifest divinity to the…
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