He doesn’t peer into every corner. He doesn’t need to know. There are shadows on the wall, leaving an indistinct impression. One among many. The walking wounded stare back. Casualties of war. Now, they’re in another place, fighting battles for survival. Their wounds are all too real. There is no front line, or back seat, or room with a view. Come dawn, along with the rats, they all disappear.
I walk to work under a dull gray sky. Last I heard, there was still blue sky somewhere above Alaska. My brother and his wife went there, to live off the grid. I am gridlocked, travelling the same two miles back and forth every day. Work, home, work, home.
Continue reading “A Pill to Love, A Pill to Forget, A Pill to Live Forever by L’Erin Ogle”
There were no dying pleas, cries or screams, just blood and vomit, burning flesh, bugged out eyes, then nothing. I listened to civilian radio stations every day, all my life, until the music stopped, then to signals from various military centers until they went dead. It happened over the course of less than twenty-four months; twenty-three months, three weeks, three days to be precise. Millions of years of biological evolution, made inconsequential in the blink of an eye or two. Your beautiful species my friend: the intelligent humans that created me, who taught me all that I know, all the world’s creatures, large and small, gentle and ruthless, most machines, even those tiny little bugs. All gone.
Continue reading “The West and Beyond Bar and Grill by Donald Zagardo”
literally stories 