Original

Reading Time: 4 minutes “I’ve heard it’s still contaminated,” Ollie says, a hint of a question in her voice. Her eyes shimmer, opalescent with reflected fog as she looks at me. A definite challenge. “I heard people were getting sick, some kind of virus.” I grit my teeth, realizing that Ollie is definitely more than she seems. But then, so am I.

Reading Time: 5 minutes I cut into the girl on the table before me, exposing her living viscera to air as biology never intended. I am committing a trespass of integument in order to heal, a perversion of the natural order in order to preserve what is natural. An apparition stands in the corner, watching with interest. Death says: “Your work continues to fascinate, Doctor.”

Reading Time: 4 minutes Discriminatory actions aren’t the only thing to look out for when considering workplace harassment. Promoting harmful material or ideas amongst coworkers can also be considered harassment, even in cases where they are promoted outside of work. 

Reading Time: 4 minutes We went to the funeral. It was a little awkward, since we hadn’t been around for a while. His parents were grateful to see us, though. In their grief, they seemed to take our presence as some sort of affirmation of their son’s life. We didn’t do anything to disillusion them.

Reading Time: 4 minutes Branch by flexing branch, Mike climbed higher. Powdery bark stained his fingers green. At the top, he laughed and drank in the view, from his family’s tiered concrete blockhouse to the river’s patrol boats. “Come on up here, Sim—” Mike almost fell when a freckled face appeared beside him. “This is dangerous,” Simon said. “We should go home.”

Reading Time: 2 minutes While what we were about to do was arguably harmless, it was definitely illegal. I kept wondering whether we were right to do this at all.

Reading Time: 2 minutes In the small town of Nowhere, / on a swampy river shore, / appeared a young woman, / covered fully in gore. / She danced through the streets / with a twirling step, / blood dotting the ground / wherever she leapt.

Reading Time: 4 minutes Azabelle pulled the pins that held up her hair. Dark curls tumbled around her face. She felt Shadow’s presence, of course, but she’d felt it so long she barely registered the danger.

Reading Time: 4 minutes She kept her eyes shut. She ran deep into the wilderness. And as the sun flickered out, and the sky went black, and she held all the light of the world behind her eyelids, she tried to pretend she could bury her pain, and she wouldn’t die alone in the cold of the mountains.

Reading Time: 4 minutes The vet said that my grief would modulate over time and eventually become a part of who I was, something I would cease to question, like the existence of my own arms.

Reading Time: 5 minutes I decided to go find Death myself. It was 2023, and a lady could do that. I didn’t need to wait around for someone to fetch me. I could do the fetching.

Reading Time: 4 minutes She wondered if she should even say it. She didn’t even want to think it. But Wyx definitely had to know, had a right to know probably. “There’s someone else on board.”

Reading Time: 3 minutes He used to have choices; now, he has a hunger. He needs to find his fiancée.

Reading Time: 4 minutes Ken’ichi’s white hazmat suit shines like a beacon as he breaks over the ridge, even through all the rain. His gait is slow and uneven. I never expected to see him again.

Reading Time: 4 minutes No magic in it. She didn’t need any. She just turned around looking some kind of way, and bung he went. Sometimes, a person sees their future in stark clarity and chooses to roll off the coil while the going’s good, and that’s the best thing that could be said about Amajane’s father.

Reading Time: 5 minutes Idyllic was the only word Brody could think to describe it. How had he missed this bit of paradise so close to camp?
“—ody?!” The static hiss of Control cut sharply through his helmet, killing the serenity settling upon him. Brody sighed. His last check-in couldn’t have been, what? Fifteen minutes ago? 

Reading Time: 4 minutes “What’s mechanical, Papa?” I asked.
“What you said. The neurons,” he replied.
Neurons? Then I remembered.

Reading Time: 4 minutes Marco backs away until he hits a door. He reaches behind him, turns the handle, and falls into the room. The door swings shut. He backs away, waiting for Big Bob to come through it, running through the best next words to choose.

Reading Time: 4 minutes “Sorry it’s not sunny.” Amar shrugs. “Rainy days are the best for time travel.”

Reading Time: 5 minutes The real crook is the Company and always has been. It’s them that got reaction drives outlawed when water’s free, dammit. They only done it so we’d have to buy fusion fuel at a thousand percent markup. Most of us so-called pirates were just freelance miners that couldn’t afford the new engines.

Reading Time: 2 minutes This has to be the year the bodies crest the top of the structure, because her parents are selling the cabin. They keep saying, It’s changed, it’s changed, it’s not the same. Even when she says she doesn’t care how it used to be, that she likes it now.

Reading Time: 4 minutes When a mysterious letter written in strange disappearing ink arrives from the daughter he banished long ago for dabbling in sorcery, a father must decipher her cryptic confession before the words and his memories fade into oblivion.

Reading Time: 4 minutes A literary creature meets her audience and must make a decision.

Reading Time: 4 minutes Gorelka the dragon has seen and done it all. But the future holds one more surprise.