What would it be like to break into a hundred different worlds? A thousand? Would he ever get used to it, the way you get used to the routines of a new job? Ray looked at the device he held in his hand. Abruptly, he tossed it up, sending it spinning end o…

Realistically it wasn't going to happen. The lighter dark of the road seemed to go on forever, winding through the greater outer dark of the forest around us. More than anything we were hungry, so hungry it made us weak. Hungry, filthy, and unprotected--t…

I followed the stream up to where I had dammed it a year ago. I was surprised it had held this long. It hadn't taken much to build, just a couple dozen rocks stacked in the right places. Looking back, I wondered why I had done it at all. I mean I knew the…

I felt around the sides of my neck. She was right. The skin there was sore, tender to the touch. My suspicion of her seemed justified and came flooding back. I was choked recently and she finds me, leash in hand? I don't know if it was guilt or what that …

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 …

I hopped over a pair of the ash-filled streams, so contaminated that the clear water of my childhood had become an opaque gray. The air wasn't much better but it was getting clearer. The sun behind the smoky sky was still such an angry red that I could fe…

There is a light that comes past my window early in the morning. It's not that bright, certainly not bright enough to wake me from a deep sleep. Unfortunately my dreams have been troubled lately and worse yet, broken by urgent calls of nature that treat m…

Funerals are odd ducks, aren't they? I mean they bring out the oddness in people. And odd people. Probably ducks too. I mean if the burying place is near a pond it's likely to attract its fair share of ducks, wouldn't you say? Like ponds and ducks, funera…

Suddenly her simply standing there watching me made her suspect. Why was this girl trying to help me? Sure it had been her dog that had woke me up but there had been no reason to stick around after her apology. She had made sure I was okay. By all account…

I awoke to soft light in the hallway outside my room. Soft greenness pulsed faintly about chest high, far below where the hallway light was mounted. The ebb and flow of it's intensity gave it a kind of bobbing motion.

There was no sign of the sun outside…

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…

Doctor Tanner waited until the clock read 8:00 before approaching Darlene. She was munching on baby carrots while watching some kind of colorful cartoon on the wall screen.

“It's time for bed.” Dr. Tanner said gently.

Without looking, Darlene replied, “…

“Do you have a wallet?”

I looked at the girl without comprehension, my mind focused on the fact that I no longer had a name, just this infinite hollow blank where my name used to be. I felt naked. Undefined. Like something vital had been stripped away.

…

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 …

The inside of the tent was dark and cold and claustrophobic. Bree rolled over in her blanket, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders. Dan, her mom's new boyfriend, whispered something on the other side of the tent causing her mom to giggle. Bree rolled …

Streaking down from the heavens, long tailed comets signaled the end of everything. Tears of blazing light marring the inscrutable face of the sky. Were we ready? It was stupid of me to think about such things now, when it was too late to matter, but I co…

A man placed his hand on the woman's shoulder and asked, “Where is Mhum-Ma?”

The leader of the left replied, “She has returned to the earth and we all bear her sorrow.” People on both sides reacted with surprise before dropping their heads in reverence. …

The two sides met, one coming from stone huts and arbitrary rules, the other from ravaged forests, a smoky sky, and angry rivers thick with debris. Male and female stood together on both sides, shifting nervously. A meeting this size was unprecedented. Ma…

Jennifer waited expectantly for an answer while staring at her phone. Her mum had warned her about talking to strangers on the internet but it was 2018 and the world was far more connected than ever before. Besides it wasn't like she had given her number …

The music grew louder as the pattern repeated. Drawing Adrian across the boundary that separated sleep and wakefulness, it began the collapse of the dream behind them. It wasn't an unpleasant sound, in fact he had chosen the ring because it made him think…

Responder pruned, collapsing in on itself, shrinking down like bacon in a frying pan. I knew from the few weeks since he'd shown up that the intensity of his emotional distress dictated the amount of area he lost. This was the worst I'd ever seen, losing …

Peter's skin itched as if people were watching him. He knew that he was alone in his apartment but the feeling was so strong that he looked over one shoulder and then the other. His living room lay behind him and while it wasn't well lit any more, ever si…

There is something not quite right with the world. It teems with chaos, madness, and sudden death. Worse than quick ones are the deaths that linger on accompanied by unbearable, untreatable pain. That which isn't it out to get us will surely let us die wi…

“Wicked are the men who dream and do nothing!”

The voice rang out above the early morning din of the market place. The accusation wasn't directed at me but in me it found a home and dug deep.

Before I knew it, my sandals had come to a stop in front of t…