A Bear at the Fridge
Reading Time: 4 minutesSometimes a spirit guide isn’t quite what you expect.
Magical realism
Gods and Monsters Installment 45: Love Without Compromise
Reading Time: 5 minutesHe will miss the fog and the light on the Bay. But he hungers for the solace of the Redwoods’ towering shadows. He needs to hear waves break endlessly on wild rocky shores.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 44: Premonitions of Endings
Reading Time: 5 minutes“Tarantulas are loners, like you,” says Ryo, resting a weightless hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “I was a loner too. Perhaps if I had it to do over… But that’s foolish talk. I don’t, I can’t. I don’t know if you can, but…”
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Gods and Monsters Installment 43: Predator and Prey
Reading Time: 8 minutesRiver enters Bert’s. In spite of himself, his heart leaps at the sight of Pam. He wants his heart to be stone. He wants never to have met her. But wishes are overrun by desire. Love triumphs over fear.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 42: Death and Memory
Reading Time: 7 minutesRiver wants to forget her, yet he knows that if he does, a part of him will die. Though he feels betrayed, he cannot keep away. He hangs the chain around his neck. He will go to Bert’s and fasten it about hers. Then he will leave, never to return, the prism remaining, a crystal kiss, a tangible memory, a concrete regret.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 41: The Color of Empathy
Reading Time: 7 minutesBeethoven does not merely drain his victims, he eviscerates them. When there are no more cats, he moves on to dogs and babies, climbing the food chain with grisly effect.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 40: The Fabric of the Universe
Reading Time: 7 minutesIt’s twilight. Jeremy has finished his eight hours of practice and is out walking through golden fields. Smoke weaves the smell of burning wood and sugar through the air. At the end of the field is a tall man.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 39: Beethoven’s Salt Sonatas
Reading Time: 9 minutesAs River’s eyes grow accustomed to the night, he sees a cat emerge from around a corner and disappear down a narrow alleyway. Another follows, and another. Surely, River thinks, there must be some meaning in all of these cats drifting toward a single destiny, their eyes glowing like secrets?
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Gods and Monsters Installment 37: Love & Death
Reading Time: 10 minutesWhen Margareta is not working, and if Pamela has been very, very good, Sarah lets her model the lacey cap. When Pam puts on the cap, she becomes an enchanted princess. The dirty pigeons that clutter the ledges of the city are snow white doves that come at her call and do her bidding. She leans out her window, arms spread wide, embracing her kingdom… until Sarah catches her and pulls her inside.
Gods and Monsters Installment 36: Stained Glass Soul
Reading Time: 9 minutesMike grabs Ashley from her quilted comfort. Her head droops back like a wilted flower. Her neck shows white in the night. Mike’s canines grow long with desire and need.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 35: Gods and Circuses
Reading Time: 7 minutesWhen Hephaestus emerged clubfooted and malformed, Hera tossed him off Mount Olympus. He fell for nine days and nine nights, landing in the sea with a splash so big it caused a tsunami. No wonder then, that he prefers Earth to Olympus and children to gods.
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Anonymous Tip
Reading Time: 7 minutesIn a near future of fast-paced social media likes and internet lurking, anonymity has a price…
Gods and Monsters Installment 34: The Fault Line Within
Reading Time: 7 minutesNow, after the advent of dreams and the appearance of color, when Gabriel reads of a killing, something inside him screams. When he looks upon a charcoal figure that so recently possessed unearthly beauty, he mourns. He wants to create, not destroy. He doesn’t like the role in which he has been cast.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 33: Pamela
Reading Time: 8 minutesVampires followed the deluge of fluid and fear, tracking the lonely, homeless, and lost to the city, drawn by the need for belief, as well as blood.
Gods and Monsters Installment 32: Time Before Time
Reading Time: 7 minutesThanatos never kills. He’s just the messenger.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 31: Small Time Gods
Reading Time: 7 minutesEver since he found Gabriel in the field, River has been cut off and alone. Separated from humanity by a knowledge that he didn’t even realize he possessed, a perception deep within his bones. An understanding that though fairy tales may come true, they are written in blood and lies.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 30: The Morgue
Reading Time: 8 minutesThe door is heavy, about four inches thick. A long narrow staircase leads down into darkness. He is in total darkness. Feeling his way slowly along the wall, carefully tapping his feet to see where the stairs begin, he finds a light switch. Harsh fluorescence floods the stairwell. This light would make anyone look dead, River thinks.
Gods and Monsters Installment 29: Beautiful and Strange
Reading Time: 7 minutesPamela stands in the doorway. River stops stirring and opens his arms. Pamela doesn’t even need to cross the room. She melts into him, soft as butter into flour. She is cold, damp as night fog.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 28: Journey’s End
Reading Time: 8 minutesThat night, Jackson does not come to Bert’s.
Gods and Monsters Installment 27: The Crossing
Reading Time: 6 minutesJim is standing on the rocky shore of a dark underground river. The only sound is the constant thrum of pebbles which gently lapping waves draw back and fling up the high strand. There is a whisper, the sound of a shadow gliding over hard round stones. Against the blackness he sees a man, tall and lean.
Gods and Monsters Installment 26: Scent Memory
Reading Time: 6 minutesGlistening like a frozen tear, delicate as a kiss, the crystal necklace lies on wine velvet cloth. Jim has never seen anything so lovely and flawless. His breath catches in his throat. It’s out of his price range. There’s no way he can afford it. There’s no way he can walk away. Something in the manner the colors intertwine weaves around his soul.
Gods and Monsters Installment 25: In the Time of Many Pigeons
Reading Time: 7 minutesIt is the first time Gabriel has heard birdsong. Usually, birds drop lifeless at his feet. Hearing the song, Gabriel is warmed by an invincible summer. He stretches his arms toward the light.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 24: Wastelands of the Wild
Reading Time: 8 minutesDust fur falls like rain, feathering into the plumes of a dove. The dove’s wings become sleeves. Amimi is shining like a hologram in the glooming.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 23: History Lies
Reading Time: 7 minutesIn the night shadows of trees, shunning the moonlight, a man waits. It is Kristjan, taller than Jim remembers. He is nearly naked, covered only by a wolf skin. In the night, his eyes glow red. As Jim looks at him, unable to turn away, something dark slips beneath Jim’s fingernails, flowing like a shadow into his blood.
Gods and Monsters Installment 22: Delicate Dust
Reading Time: 6 minutesIn the mornings, if he wakes beside the dust of a beautiful stranger, he knows he’s drained the world of a bit of color, a bit of beauty, however deadly.
Gods and Monsters Installment 21: Out of Dust – The Lenni Lenape
Reading Time: 8 minutesOut of the earth, up through the floor, dust rises. It clings together, forming a translucent woman. She is brown as earth. Her face is worn. Her eyes are shadows in the night. Red paint dots her cheeks and ears. Her hair is made of darkness, the part decorated by a circle of crimson. “I am Amimi, matriarch of the Lenni Lenape,” she says.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 20: The Love Song of the Mole Cricket
Reading Time: 5 minutesMr. Jones appears to have been mauled by a wild animal. His body shows evidence of teeth marks and claw marks. The wounds are uncommon.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 18: We Are The Stuff That Genes Are Made Of
Reading Time: 8 minutesHe awoke at dawn, sore and scratched. His mouth, clothes, and limbs were covered with gore. His clothes were in tatters. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, trying to remember.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 17: Moirai Mechanics
Reading Time: 7 minutes“Where did you get the gun, River?” Jackson asks. River looks down. His right hand is wrapped around a cold black gun.
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The Imaginary Librarian
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn a sparse, orderly imaginary office, a librarian awaits unseen directives, tending to imaginary tomes with quiet diligence. As dawn approaches, she fulfills a final task, providing closure for a life departing.
Thumbing to Sugar Daddy Oberon
Reading Time: 10 minutesIn spite of interfering adults, a spoiled child is determined to claim her birthright in the court of Oberon and Titania.
Eight Legs Under Moonlight
Reading Time: 12 minutesIn a Victorian town plagued by werespiders, a curious spinster takes in a mysterious woman.
The Nocturnality of Dorian Salva
Reading Time: 17 minutesDorian Salva is an artist with a consuming passion for birds. One night, his work-in-progress takes on an eerie life of its own, and the relationship between artist and subject, painter and painted, undergoes an uncanny reversal.
Out of the Darkness
Reading Time: 4 minutesA young girl, desperate to find her beloved pet, ventures out into the darkness.
Rainbow Sprout
Reading Time: 4 minutesStupid car accident. Stupid sister. Stupid globetrotting, summer-consuming, plant-feeding adventure.
That’s what Mother said. “Oh, it’ll be an adventure! Just think how happy your sister will be with her sprout! She needs this now.” I get it, I’m grateful to have a working spine, but that doesn’t mean I should have to waste months trudging around… where the hell am I now? Greece?
The Last Thing Taken
Reading Time: 9 minutesWhen Sophia meets Oloku, she thinks it’s the perfect, strings-free affair. But when she learns his secret, she finds there’s a price to pay for loving him.
The Burning Point of a Soul
Reading Time: 4 minutesHow do I discover what my soul burns for? Do I even want to find it?
The Mistaken Haunting of Seth Harrison
Reading Time: 15 minutesExcerpt
Lizzie Borden took an axe.
Gave her mother forty whacks.
But did she?
Three grifters get caught up in the Lizzie Borden murders and it plays itself out one hundred years later.
Inuksuk
Reading Time: 17 minutesErecting a cell tower in the middle of an arctic waste–next to one of those ancient stone Inuksuks to fix location, to show scale, and to provide a little local color–would be perfect for the “We’ve got you covered” ad campaign. What could go wrong?
Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly by Toge Productions
Reading Time: 2 minutesCoffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly is the sequel to the critically acclaimed Coffee Talk by Toge Productions. In this game, you serve drinks to magical patrons which impact the outcomes of the stories they tell you.
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A Clairvoyant’s Misfortune
Reading Time: 4 minutesSomeone might say: pal, since you know what’s going to happen, why don’t you do something to change your future! I can only say one thing: I did try it, many times, but there is no way to change your fate. If your life has got something in store for you, you will surely get it.
Deracination
Reading Time: 4 minutesLovesick Serena is prepared to risk everything and uproot herself completely to be with the one she loves. But are her feelings returned?
Occupational Hazards or The Quite Curious Tale of Astridr Grimsdottir
Reading Time: 5 minutesWorking to a deadline can sometimes lead to astonishing conversations, even revelations. Does the artist dictate the art? Or the art the artist?
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Nothing in the Dark
Reading Time: 26 minutesCosmic horrors await an astronomer on a solo observing run.