Story is marked as mature

"I can't get back to the tunnels. We have to find a place to crash." Hard Drive said when the top sealed over the convertible. He made a few hard turns, zig zagging through town to try and lose the last drone. It crashed into the side of a building with a…

"Hey," came a less than confident voice, "How about you stop, or else...you know...the fighting, and stuff."

Three surly thugs looked from their would be victim, a timid businessman, to see a lone figure clad in impossible armor standing under the street…

Onwards and forwards, path guided by faith, Orthael strode on. He did not see where his feet fell, he did not know where the end of his journey lay, he did not drive the weapon that tugged him onwards on its lethal dance. The golden light at the tip of th…

With a speed and grace divine, Orthael spun to receive the blow to his shield. His foe held close, as if embracing a lover, hissing wildly.

The shadow was humanoid like its puppets, for it too had once been a man. It was a flickering silhouette of a thin…

The guard in front of the incubator chamber checked Alan's ID carefully, moving it to see the holograms dance. Mother as always hired the best. For herself.

“Sorry for your loss,” the guard said.

“She'll be back soon,” Alan replied, staring at the seedp…

It's so frustrating not knowing why things are the way the are. I'm on a familiar street. I think it's my own but it's hard to tell. It looks and feels like I should know it but there is no sense of recognition. It's night time and the street is dark, alm…

Start with a knife, a tree, a candle, a corpse. Start with a dead bird and its dead feathers spread out about it, mites crawling across it.

Start with the spark of a match being struck; the brown honeycomb scraping, smudging phosphorous and chlorate toge…

Klaxons. Klaxons everywhere. Truly this was it.

After months of combing through this enormous abandoned spaceship, we’ve all started to lose hope. But V’Ru kept pushing us, and she was right to do so. If we were to make any use of this monstrosity of a v…

Chaz raises the weapon he holds in his left hand. He can feel the Weight of it dragging his arm back toward the earth, but it is that very same Weight that allows him to wield the hand cannon at all. When he first claimed the Kraken, when he first held th…

Malika looked to the holy man.

"What say you, Reliath?" she asked. "Why didn't the greater dead destroy us, as Morduth suggests?"

Orthael thought for several long moments. "I cannot say for sure," he replied. "But perhaps, while the creature is more g…

They come for you at night, you know that?

They come and they take you. They bring you to their ship or their lab. They put things inside you. Little machines. Little machines so that they can talk to you. Tell you things. Tell you that they are in contr…

Malika took the creature's arms in two quick strokes, toying with the monster in an almost vindictive manner. Then she followed it up with a blindingly fast sweep, lopping the deathless' head from its shoulders, banishing it back to Ashmar. She could affo…

“You seem off,

Is everything okay?”

“Yea I’m fine,

I just need to pray.”

“Are you sure?

I’m here to talk...”

“Yes, uh, of course..

There’s no need to balk.”

...

I should be worried....right?

I shouldn’t just let them be.

Because it’s the middle of the…

Social situations were fraught with problems that invariably led to people getting hurt and so Bob went out only to get the necessities of life and was never out for long. He was also a hoarder. His residence was littered with the remnants of past meals n…

"... happy hunting, boys!"

I looked down in time to see the LAUNCHCON light flick from red to green. Lifting the safety cap off the switch below the tiny glow, I waited my customary three heartbeats and flipped it upwards.

The locking arms released us …

As I sat on the train to Atlanta, my mind was full of doubt. Not too long ago, this very train had taken him out of my life. Would I ever be able to find him again? What was I going to do in Atlanta? I wouldn't make a good recruit, but I didn't have any s…

I’m caught in a raging sea of should’s, helplessly flailing against the tide I've created. Through the roar of the sea, I hear his childish laugher. “Da…nny. Wh…hy. Danny.. Why...you?” I’m swept beneath the waves of regret…

It’s peaceful in this cold da…

There's a lot of junk out in space in orbit around the Earth.

Even though the crew of the Refuse Recovery 3, or RR3, a play on Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, had been out picking up space debris for 7 years, they'd never seen this before.

Frozen, every non-met…

Grey mist sails past his face, and it is enough to shake him from his reverie. His mind is sluggish, slow, as though he is awakening from a dream. Perhaps he is, but then he has woken into a nightmare.

He looks down at his hands, outstretched before him,…

You sometimes lost your way, but when you make it to a place like this, arriving without knowing how and why you arrived, you know you're not lost anymore. The air has an inimitable quality to itself, seemingly contained with the light of a day beginning …

She walks down the street in a red dress. Her long, black hair, emerald eyes, and pale skin catch me, even from across the street. How is it that no one else notices her?

She turns her head, looking directly at me. A smile, a wink, and I'm frozen in plac…

"We can create, but not collaborate!" shouted the ficlatte patron from atop the saucer. It only served to make her a few inches taller.

"We can't hear you!" called the techie trying to connect a mic to a giant speaker but clearly not having brought the ri…

It had been fourteen days since he left. It was my choice, but, I couldn't help but think that this isn't what I signed up for. It had been a tumultuous twelve years and I knew I had to say goodbye, but I couldn't help but feel like I was ruining my life.…

Grims pulled the corpse of the kid from the post, allowing it to flop to the ground. There was no dignity in death, not that the Korpskys had any dignity in life, either. Once again he heaved the body over his shoulder and made his way among the weeds and…