They say there ain’t no sound quite so terrifying as a collapsing Rust mine. From how the older Extractors tell it, the worst of it ain’t the rumble of Martian rock and mud all around you, but the silence afterward. Today I found out for myself. I felt it […]
I saw her as soon as I materialized in Golden Gate Park. She lounged on a blanket, waiting for the Jefferson Airplane concert. The crown of dandelions adorning her hair seemed familiar somehow. She turned toward me, perhaps sensing my stare—and I swayed on my feet, knocked dizzy by a rush of déjà
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Soren was only a boy when I met him, a boy lost in the Forest of Souls. Princess Savine had taken me there, her newest pikka, to remind me of what happened to handmaidens who displeased her. Her skin was as dusky and golden as the marigolds strewn across the royal table, for on these
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My current mess started the day I opened my email to find an unusual subject line in one of the headers. Your Payment to Middle Earth Has Been Accepted. Brutus, my purebred Labradoodle mutt, lifted his head from where he’d set it on my knee, his golden ears twitching.
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When I’d started the hike, solitude had felt like a gift—space to breathe, to let the silence scour away the months of second-guessing and what-ifs. Time to decide what comes next. Now, as stingy sunlight bled away, unease pooled under my ribs, spreading with every breath. Massive storm clouds, bellies swollen
Limited Series Part 2 I’m gathering dust at my usual booth, taking a break from the midnight bazaar after reuniting the kid with his parents. I contemplate how long I can keep doing this—saving folks—as I chow down on a combo of onion rings and a soggy mushroom Swiss when a kid bolts
Limited Series Part 1 My stall at the midnight bazaar wasn’t hard to find. All you had to do was walk past countless other derelicts pawning family heirlooms or renting themselves out as a companion to talk to. To fuck. To play therapist. The smell of deep-fried illegal meat and contraband cigarette smoke
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Kaiel rocketed into space, his flight invisible in the night. Not quite invisible. A missile, silent in the thinning air, ricocheted off Kaiel’s ship and exploded in a blitz of hot metal. His spacecraft cartwheeled; time trickled to a stop, flattening his life-beat to a halt. His spaceship juddered,
As soon as Carna steps into the lift, her pager notifies her of a job on the other end of the galaxy. The pay would cover her rent, but should she choose to accept the run, the cosmic bike courier would, as the ad promises, have to make it all the way across
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I was five days overdue. “Go fetch the washing off the line,” Mom said, “let’s see if that gets things started.” So I grunted down over my belly, grabbed the laundry basket, and lumbered through the yard in bare feet. I glanced back. Mom was watching my slow progress from the back step,