If I had only learned to drive, or better yet, refused to visit my parents in their apocalyptic bunker, we’d be happily at home, cuddled on the couch in front of the Criterion collection.

But the ferns have turned Papa's thoughts to slow, ponderous things, moving the way a fighter does just before they hit the ground. Fresh fiddleheads unfurl from his skin each night, bobbing merrily with his breath each morning.

His grip tightens, turning the picnic into murder.

We’ve travelled for weeks to find something like this—not the planet, but its ring, swirling iridescent with icy blues and silver. A bounty of water.

In a sea of long grass and tiny yellow blueberry flowers some ways off of Route 1, just about halfway between Cobscook Bay and Passamaquoddy Bay, the town of Sauve-Majeure puts up its back against the Bald Moose Mountains.

There are big curse words and little curse words in anybody’s language. A little cursing isn’t hardly cursing at all. A child could do it and everyone round the supper table would laugh, turn red, and stick a bun in that sour young mouth while secretly making a note to…

The ocean is a woman and it is dreaming, dreaming, Ekaterina thinks as she holds the hardsuit’s arm open, ready to clip a sample.

Three pieces of toast—dark on one side, light on the other. A cup of coffee. Rosh’s preference is Blend 14, with hints of Sub-Saharan Africa and caramel, delivered tepid with more milk than expresso.

When the news said three more young men had been found dead in their homes, Grace knew her mother had come to town.

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io At sunfall, the sellward, the spellcaster, and the wyrmrider paused at the foot of a dune and peered at the sun wester across the Sahael, the sea of sand. They had walked thirty days and were yet to come upon an oasis, caravan, or waykeep. At this r…

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via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io “Shit,” Charlotte Berry whispered as the fog of sleep began to clear. She heard Arthur fumbling in the bathroom cabinet and saw his reflection in the mirror, salt-and-pepper hair and a small bald spot as he hunched over, a medicine bottle close to h… Fugue State | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2JWuf85

Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™ | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ul7GB6 In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written, all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts. You maintain a menu of a half dozen Experiences on your digital blackboard, but Vision Quest is the one th…

In memory of Bob Yano Sr. As the house A.I., she always projected her voice as if just around a corner or down a hall, and it gave the illusion that a real person waited barely out of sight. via Pocket Master Brahms | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2S6FOvZ via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

Alec Chu traveled the high road, swinging his bot through the trees. The wet branches shook with the storm’s convulsions but penetrating the kidnapper’s camp perimeter was easy from up here, and the rain and wind didn’t touch him. Not in the Hole. v… Riding the Signal | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2BBnxRS via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

You’d think it would make us happy when a kid checks out the same book a zillion times in a row, but actually it just keeps us up at night. The Runaway Prince is one of those low-budget young adult fantasies from the mid-nineties, before J.K. via Po… A Witch’s Guide to Escape A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2C1ax4Y

When the dog dies, she doesn’t know she is dying. You shouldn’t feel sorry for her. To her, life lasts forever.  Infants and dogs recognize the flow of time, but not their presence in it. via Pocket

Each morning is a decision. Should I put on the brown mask or the blue? Should I be a tradesman or an assassin today? Whatever the queen demands, of course, I am. But so often she ignores me, and I am left to figure out for myself who to be. via Poc… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Hzt7aG

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io This one was made of glass. He wasn’t all that similar to my son, but he was sweet with a high, gentle voice like wind blowing across branches. via Pocket

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Black stone lying on a white stone. César Vallejo, the author of the poem “Black stone lying on a white stone,” was a Peruvian writer living in Spain in the 1930s when he succumbed to an infection turned totalitarian. via Pocket Toward a New Lexicon of Augury | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2zuMo7L via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

The little girl reached up and tugged on her mother’s sleeve. “Mommy. That man’s here again!” The woman looked over at the odd man who’d been at the park for the last several weekends to see that he was, indeed, smiling at them and waving. via Pocket Godzilla vs Buster Keaton, Or I Didn’t Even Need a Map | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2OHrQyu via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io My parents were offered the usual platitudes: Einstein did not speak until he was in primary school(not true); did you try a body-based therapy(the answer a horrified “no!”); she will never shut up when she starts(in high school, I would often go fo… The Prison-house of Language | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2C5Xn9Q

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Poets and sages like to say that there is clarity in certain death. That a calm resignation settles over the nearly deceased, and they embrace the inevitability of the end of life with dignity and grace. via Pocket Ghosts of New York | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2CgiA0E

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io MS. Orre. 1013A Miscellany of materials copied from within Master Leuwin Orrerel’s (d. Lady Year 673, Bright Be the Edges) library by Dominic Merrowin (d. Lady Year 673, Bright Be the Edges). via Pocket The Green Book | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2CgiJRK