From her climate-controlled pod Rachel reports with desperation: “My hands ache from thumping on the door marked “Help” at the corridor’s end. They’re bleeding; my mar…

His grandfather gave him two gold swords to bury under the oak tree during a full moon, and he would never die. In the moonlight, he felt himself gently lifted up. And then he felt a freeing moveme…

Whenever possible, I passed Room 489, the office with the windowed door. It was on the same floor as the office where I worked, but might as well have been in China. My grandmother, who lived when …

“France wouldn’t have ice cream if it wasn’t for the Italians,” Emilio teases Blanche as he places generous helpings of gelato in front of her seven elderly clients. “…

I’m so fucking tired of fire. What a suffocating, depressing place, Io. Heaven for a geologist, maybe, but a real hell hole. When I got the news that I was being transferred to the Sub-Europa…

“Our mattress is still good.” Pinch-faced Nan hurried after her heavy husband. “It’s lumpy and it smells.” Balding Herbert scanned the storefronts along 8th Street. Ea…

Frank stumbled into the deserted park and sat down on the weathered bench beneath the one streetlight in the area that worked; he leaned forward and covered his face with his trembling hands. He si…

Mr. James Brown Brown and Fletchter Suite 777 Fearsville, TN USA 11666 Phone: 1-423-888-9109 E-Mail: jbrown@comcast.net November 1, 2009 Re: Discrimination Lawsuit CERTIFIED MAIL Ms. Karen Wilson L…

He intended to stop in Afryea for the evening, but the chicken would not let him pass. It was a monster of a bird, nearly the size of a hyena, with a great purple comb and a red tipped beak and bla…

There it stood. Staring. She flipped it the bird. It did not take flight. Strange, she had seen it done and almost anticipated that sense of satisfaction when she would watch it disappear in dismay…

I remember it clearly: the seventh day of December at 9 PM, I left the factory for the last time. The air all around the loom smelled like burning cotton, but in the alleyway, this smell turned col…

Endless yelling. “Let us see it.” “Does it still work?” “Give it here, now, woman!” I had found one. They knew I had it. They caught me looking at it. I’m …

As she stood there,‭ ‬tied to a stake,‭ ‬Treya was a little bummed out her village had pegged her for the demon sacrifice.‭ ‬Yeah,‭ ‬she was a beautiful maiden and all that,‭ ‬but she’d had big pla…

The new book was placed on the bookcase between Lady Chatterly’s Lover and The Kama Sutra. Since one can endure only so much of anything,‭ ‬the stunned little paperback crept sheepishly away from t…

The Technopocalyps arrived unexpectedly,‭ ‬as most apocalypses do.‭ ‬Just POOF and one day all digital technology died,‭ ‬ceasing to function,‭ ‬probably permanently.‭ ‬Everything that‭ “‬spoke‭” ‬…

Martin slipped the unknown Frenchman’s ulna into the sleeve of his jacket.‭ ‬The bone felt like a long,‭ ‬dry stick of chalk against his skin.‭ ‬With practiced nonchalance,‭ ‬he joined a depa…

We open the box and look down at the child,‭ ‬moist and naked,‭ ‬blinking,‭ ‬hunched in its sealed jar.‭ ‬Hair shade‭ ‬4,‭ ‬Summer Honey,‭ ‬and eye colour‭ ‬6,‭ ‬Warm Mocha‭ ‬-‭ ‬as we ordered. His…