After piling the paper bills from his last passenger and placing the square photograph of his wife on top of the money, the ferryman lights a match. He lowers it slowly, shaking. But just then a breeze blows out the flame, leaving nothing behind but a thin waft of smoke. There are no more matches, unfortunately. Now his hut—earthy, with a cot, a bucket, and a small shrine inside—feels emptier than ever.
Continue reading “Karass by Iván Brave”
I call my boss, whose texts I’ve been ignoring for days, and tell him I’m returning to work. He says not to bother. Serves me right. I’ve let everything go to hell since Arlene left. I vow to pull myself together. Tomorrow. I take a few diazepam and go to bed.
Continue reading “The Man Who Pulled Himself Together by David Henson”
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Meanwhile, “inside” a song playing in the fantasy multiverse….
A middle aged man dressed in late 18th century finery stood pensively at a window. It was late in the evening and he was gazing across the wily, windy moors at an ethereal, yet extremely familiar young woman in a fleecy white dress. She was singing (incredibly, accompanied by an invisible orchestra) and steadily progressing toward the window in an artistic dance. He heard his name in her song, “Heathcliff.” (The lyrics also contained some character observations that Heathcliff could have done without.)
Continue reading “Wuthering GOAT by Leila Allison”
The sirens didn’t bother me because I was busy thinking about ending things. On the morning of my 573rd cycle, we rolled out of our threadbare bed with a rumbling belly. Breakfast went down stale and seedy. Military rations were all we’d managed to trade for lately; a half-eaten block of Nutrient-Toast mocked us on the counter.
Continue reading “The Ending of Us, Toxic Love During the Apocalypse by Karley Cisler”
She moves her arms, her hands, her fingers as if she’s floating in water. From an index finger, a swirl begins. It’s the air. Concentrated. Rotating clockwise. An inch in diameter. It bends all the light and all the colors in the room, yet remains clear.
Continue reading “Swirls by Laura Shell”
On July 5 of 2033 Antarctic bases McMurdo, Davis, Casey and others reported earthquakes of 6 magnitude on the Richter scale. South Africa and Tierra Del Fuego in South America had minor tsunamis shortly after the earthquakes. Helicopters flew to the suspected center of the disturbance near the South Pole. What they saw was deeply disturbing. An area of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers had subsided anywhere from a few to a hundred meters deep. What appeared to be naked humans were slowly digging out of the steaming slush. As the observers goggled at the scene, something like a red guided missile flew out of the depression so fast it was just a blur. There was no safe landing place, so the helicopters which were short of fuel flew back to their bases. When the film they had taken was released, the world observed a second odd event.
Continue reading “Kingdom Collapse by Doug Hawley”
I was watching the 1969 Science Fiction flick The Valley of Gwangi on TV last month. It was playing on the ancient Philco set that connects the PDQ network in our sister realm of Other Earth to my home realm of Saragun Springs. The film was the final Ray Harrhausen/Willis O’Brien dinosaur picture. The story involved a thirty-foot tall, psychotic Allosaurus named (brace yourself) “Gwangi,” who somehow managed to reproduce (apparently without a Mrs. Gwangi) and survive at a “Forbidden Valley” in Mexico with other unlikely creatures for at least 145-million years–without, mind you, attracting notice until 1969–that from a reptile with the brain power of a caraway seed.
Continue reading “My Fair Juan G Starring Boots the Impaler By Leila Allison”
Prologue
A psycho doesn’t need to explain her actions until the trial begins. And even then it is optional. Thus the answer to all things “Why?” in my make-believe land of Saragun Springs is almost always a case of a shrug and the words “shit happens”–a concept that is a byproduct of Free Will. Still, everything sounds fancier in Latin, and telling someone “Stercore Accidit ” gives one an air of scholarship; the following is a case of Stercore Accidit if there ever has been one.
Continue reading “The Giant Clock Radio by Leila Allison”
Behold the little god of half-assedness
Officially nameless, Charleston’s “Alone Park” was once part of neighboring New Town Cemetery. “Once” because In 1973 two-hundred square feet of graveyard property was accidentally left out when chainlink replaced New Town’s original fencing. Upon discovering the error, the city council refused to cough up another cent for link-fencing, but it didn’t want an inch of their property left unconquered, either.
Continue reading “From the Files of the Alone Park Project By Leila Allison”
Death loved Life, and she loved him, too.
Life was everything and nothing. Her skin, translucent and radiant, was the sun, and her shining eyes the millions of stars. Her small mouth was the clouds and her hair was the singing forests. Life sang, passionate and golden, and green was brought to the world. Life wept, and water nourished the land. Life slumbered, and there were nights of twilight.
Continue reading “To Wilt by Djordje Negovanovic”
literally stories 