Thanks to a bright sun and a wide cloudless sky, the afternoon was warm with nothing but the echo of a breeze to prevent it from getting too hot. That just goes to show that monsters weren't caged by night. They can show up at any time, even a day as nic…

"Here it gors. Me and my cogs was moffing along the murky part of the Long Tews, minding our own business-grifts, we was. When all of a sudden these two 'barians spilled outta a drunkard's den. Real strangers, they was, and really going at it, faces like …

Daryl scrubbed at his skin wishing it were lighter. White would be good but no amount of bleach would make it look natural. Lighter skin could him safe passage in and out of Louisiana as long as no one looked too closely, which they would. Paranoia fueled…

Three of us rode north in my 2002 Camry. Sometimes it felt too small, but having recently been in a Volvo from the eighties, I was forced to concede that cars had gotten a lot roomier since the time of ALF. Wil and David (never Dave) didn't feel the same …

I feel like I am a single cell in some great dying beast. It thrashes and the earth bleeds thickly, feverish and broken. It's so obvious but no one pays attention. I have to wonder that if I am a cell in this thing, could the right cell save such a massiv…

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the year is 900 billion. the universe dims and reddens as star formation declines and space stretches the light of the aging remainder.

undead armies now clash across desolate planetscapes and megastructures, the drafted minds of eons past brought to fig…

Emmex kept her eyes up and her the focus of her hearing behind her. The sirens had stopped but that didn't mean that no one was following her. Some street teams used “birds and the bees,” catchall slang for any flying drone, to keep an eye from the sky ev…

Thin magnets woven into the suit gloves tugged the gun into my grip with distinctive pull that threw me momentarily back to thousands of hours spent at the range practising with a weapon just like this one - and to the reason why I'd left it all behind.

…

“When we walk, we put one foot in front of the other. Each step forward we take is one that matters. If you are able to advance a yard, a foot, even an inch, then congratulations, you're still alive and doing us proud. Holding the line is good and it has…

“Claire, did you want to give your mom something?” Tammy asked, propelling her niece forward.

The six year old approached the hospital bed, took the worn out rabbit she had been hugging against her chest, and gravely pushed it into her mother's hands. "B…

"When will you understand that I love you?" I wrote. "I know it sounds crazy and incomprehensible given the circumstances, but my heart has a mind of its own. I try to rein it in, but it keeps running away after memories of you."

"Little things, like son…

Our train of wagons, ten strong, traveled along the narrow ledges of the Rushaven Mountains. Even as slow as we were going many of the wheels squeaked but we dared not stop to oil them until dawn's blush seeped across the eastern sky.

From this high up, …

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Pressing into the mirror, I slid into shadow. Coldness suffused every cell of my body until the pain of freezing became numbness and unable to breathe, I drowned.

Ghostly presences, silent and eerie, faded in and out around me. Seeing details was hard, l…

Rain pelted the windshield of our station wagon and the wipers carried the water away in wide flat arcs. The radio was turned way down low until it was little more than a generic hum. Dad's fingers tapped the steering wheel as if he could still hear it. D…

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Wind hammered the windows and made the shutters crack against the outside of Kevin's house. Bent over a chair near the fireplace, he listened to the sounds and imagined some great beast being hunted by enthusiastic men, courageous and true. Yesterday rain…

Before entering through the hole he'd made, Darnell unhooked his tether and attached it to a metal eye-hook below the outer handhold. Then he stashed his torch and climbed inside, careful not to tear his suit. After entering the airlock Darnell found the …

It's a nightmare to see you. If I catch a glimpse of you without warning, my heart gives a panicked lurch, like a frightened cat trying to bolt every which way at once. Yet I placed you on the face of my phone so that anytime I use it, I see you smiling, …

When I woke, I found my body folded up around my stomach like a clam. That was where a hardening pearl of pain thundered, building pressure I couldn't ignore even while unconscious. My brain tried to get a sense of my surroundings at the same time as anot…

Frank shook his head. His brain was slowing down. He was sure of it. His thoughts came too slowly these days like ships navigating through a thick and treacherous fog struggling through a sea of syrup. His brain felt like it was wrapped in smothering blan…

The second dream vanishes from memory the instant I wake up and stays gone for five hours. When it comes flooding back without warning, I lose all sense of place, trapped in the realization that I have dreamed about my ex again for the second time this we…

I loaded my bag into the car. My sons gave me hugs as if they'd never see me again. My husband stood sadly and worried. He held me for a long time.

Our argument over the past 24 hours lingered in my head. I was still going. This was the opportunity of a…