Right on time, too: 4:03 AM, according to the almanac. O Sumo Garcia-Murry, or OSGM for short. But nobody said that. That sounded stupid.

O was the perfect person to bind this team together. Even Con felt braver when she showed up, nodding to everyone unt…

They agreed to five posse members per team, not counting Con and Tor, the leaders of the temporary pax. Tory thumbed her mobile phone and, after several months, assembled a cracked team of heisters: Turbo Lean (the speedster), Andreas Ut (the fireworks ex…

Orange was in like a shot. It didn't matter what kind of shot. Orange was always looking for some action, which was what drew him to movie production in the first place. Right now he was working on a tracking shot, and had almost found his quarry. After t…

"What?" he demanded, sick of all the verbiage I've been spewing like someone spewing something.

"Sweetling," Tory signaled with her flags, "It's time for a resolution. We've been at it like frogs for too many years. We're both more than a hundred years ol…

"The time has come," Tory said, "to speak of manly things. First, I want to return the unicorn horn you left at my place back in '78. Here."

Connie took it graciously, smiling bitterly. "My point exactly," he intoned. "But what's yours, Tory?"

I'll have t…

And now it was time for a reckoning. "Check, please," intoned Tory.

After settling with old Furn, it was time to talk some more, like before only more recently.

"So what do you think?" asked Tory, holding her breath...quite a challenge, if you haven't tri…

"Leave that girl alone!" The stranger called. The children turned to regard the newcomer, a woman, clad in purple rising armour, accented with gold furs, holding an ornate spear.

Now nobody could accuse these children of being particularly intelligent, b…

In Keshintai's absence, Taka fell to sadness. Her life became a series of motions that she followed. Her lessons lost most of their meaning, her time in the library was spent absent mindedly browsing the pages of long-forgotten tomes, though not a word wa…

The Walmart and its parking lot were gone, replaced by a fleshy dome. Colors swam inside, alternating back and forth between contaminated white of curdled milk and the oily yellow of spoiled butter. It heaved and sighed and rippled with jellied motion.

W…

I need to get my mind under control,

Or else I might not ever find success.

But when I try to focus, dread distress

Engulfs me. Like a damn’d, eternal soul,

I seem to see a future filled with fear

And torment, doomed to fail the friends I cherish.

My faul…

You reach out with your hands, ready to shove against the pushbar.

Yowtch!! It is burning hot.

You'd better get your handkerchief or something before trying that again.

There was an abrupt change of context, so violent that Tenever felt himself feeling for the edges of the dream, but was thrown back by the immediacy of the scene.

The interior of an armoured vehicle was once again folded around him, but it was mostly ups…

No, I wasn't concerned about faceless, independent threats. I was waiting for a far more dangerous foe to show his face.

"Nothing at all in the last few days," the crewman said to me over a tumbler of whiskey. "Nothing 'cept for a whisper of some Martese…

It wasn't Neptune who found us first, though.

A pirate craft dropped down on us a few days later, plummeting from a heavy cloud bank where it had been lying in wait. It arrested its fall neatly and elegantly off our starboard side, heliographs stuttering…

"Hraz'Elarion!"

"Hraz'Elarion, have you been climbing trees again? Look at the state of your clothes!" Selura fussed over the young half-elf. In truth, she was proud of the boy. He had grown up to be a compassionate, charming, benevolent contradiction …

Story is marked as mature

Rain poured down in thick sheets, dense enough to severely limit visibility. I couldn't see the enemy troops--not a single soldier, tanks, or mech--but I knew they were out there ever since my radar and communications equipment stopped chattering. The sto…

"Which couple will brave the journey?" the gypsy matriarch asked her captive audience. She had bespoken a spell and sand rose like smoke and drifted towards me and the one that I wished was my partner.

The spell was listening to my heart, but if I let it…

Although the night was clear and cloud free, the streets were dark. A summer wind brought a refreshing coolness off the ocean and I stopped my midnight wanderings to lean against a building, letting the air wash over me. It was sweeter than expected, almo…

Leland slumped looking at his hands. He could still hear each of the sour notes that they had drawn forth from the baby grand piano, the horrid music--no it wasn't music but noise!--hanging around, permeating the air like the stench of vinegar. What a tra…

"I used to be madly in love with you, but you pushed me hard away."

"No! When did I do that? I never pushed you away."

"The day you said to me that you would never try to steal me away from my family."

"I wouldn't. Family is important."

"But that was the …

Messenger dings again, the three inside the bubble becoming a four.

She wants to talk and still I don't want to bother her. Because I love her and I know she doesn't love me. She's reaching out for the first time in years. I don't want to fail her but wh…

Sound echoed through the winding passages of the fissure, ultimately coming from a great cavern where naked men danced in a circle. Ringing them, women beat drums and if not drums, their thighs or the walls.

There was only one light, a fearful red tongue…

I eventually settle down. I'm not sure exactly when she got it, but she's suddenly wiping my face with a warm, damp cloth. It feels good. After a few minutes, she stops. "Are you going to be okay?"

I take a deep breathe. "Yeah. Yeah, actually. I think I …

Dust. It was the dust, Tenever had decided. A very simple phenomenon that somehow accurately described everything that was FUBAR about this current situation. Normally any arcane practitioner of just about any ability had at least one warded layer to prot…