Gods and Monsters Installment 28: Journey’s End
Reading Time: 8 minutesThat night, Jackson does not come to Bert’s.
Fiction
Your Entire Universe in One Bite
Reading Time: 4 minutesFirst dates are always scary, but sometimes fear can be delicious.
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.
I Regret Any Future Impact of My Words and Actions
Reading Time: 3 minutesThis piece imagines a future world where apologies are necessary for every step of personal interactions with others.
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Invocation
Reading Time: 4 minutesA desperate young Wiccan encounters an archetypal presence in a shopping mall Santa.
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.
Coffee Robot
Reading Time: 4 minutesOne million, two hundred-thousand seconds later, the reporter from the Tribune sips his coffee and raises his hand. “I just don’t see how people can be expected to trust you after an incident like this.”
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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On the Edge of Destruction
Reading Time: 4 minutesA young slaver unknowingly captures her childhood friend, and must consider the extent to which they are each beyond salvation.
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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Real Women
Reading Time: 4 minutesA group of mannequins from a fashion department store dream of becoming real women.
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.
How Chaac the Rain God Moved to Venice and Became a Glutton-Free Vegan
Reading Time: 8 minutesWhen ancient Mexican gods visit Venice Beach, America gets a change of dirt.
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She Said Yes and a City Died
Reading Time: 3 minutesDon’t blame her. She knew that if she avoided the knife, she could grant her city centuries to grow and thrive. She also believed if she made that choice, she would die by year’s end.
The Virgin of Santos de la Tierra
Reading Time: 7 minutesWhen a Virgin is seen in a small Mexican town it’s a miracle – the town is blessed… or is it?
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.
Ties That Bind
Reading Time: 14 minutesA cosmic traveller helps a grieving fisherman to deal with his trauma.
The Private Man
Reading Time: 4 minutesThey knew each other very well, as much as the Law would allow. Their children were beautiful, curious, and kind. To know where they were now, or what their mother looked like, could lose him everything.
Shadows
Reading Time: 5 minutesJason’s daughter, Sarah, approached him one morning and said, “Daddy, the Shadow Man is back.”
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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Hands Down
Reading Time: 2 minutesHow will a child react to his father’s unsettling business decisions?
Two Old Friends in the Garden
Reading Time: 5 minutesAn old man’s dedication to his garden goes beyond the grave.
Native in Arbors
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe emigrants to Planar6 have survived the voyage from Earth via conversion to semi-sentient fungal forms, a process that is reversed upon arrival. The trouble is, one of the crew prefers to stay the way they are…
Rod Serling School of Writing
Reading Time: 4 minutesA budding student sci-fi writer applies to the Rod Serling School because of the celebrity’s name attached to the school. When a salesman comes by the house to pitch the school, her father joins the conversation, with unexpected results.
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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Playing Human
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhat does it mean to be human? Other species may never understand, but they can have fun pretending.
Growth
Reading Time: 3 minutesHe is deeply fascinated by growth. And he’s ready to sacrifice a lot for its sake…
Gods and Monsters Installment 19: Lonely Journeys
Reading Time: 7 minutesI drove that ancient pick-up all the way out into the Catskill Mountains. Even after that trek, that good old Ford was running strong. Still is. I rented a place out in the woods about ten miles from Greene Village, New York. It was tiny; just bed, bath, and stove, but I didn’t need more.
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Life Online
Reading Time: 7 minutesIn the environmentally and economically devastated not-so-distant future, best friends Pen and Lissy have fought for years simply to survive. After a lifetime of struggle, Lissy is desperate for escape, and decides uploading her mind onto a computer chip – complete with home-designed software – is her only option.
The Skies Our Home
Reading Time: 5 minutesThe funeral was hard. But the thing that helped me smile through the tears was counting the times Tom had sat on top of hotter pyres and lived.
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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Classics: The Star
Reading Time: 15 minutesA strange star is spotted in the distant sky. Scientists watch as its near miss brings humanity to its knees.
Snoogle Hunt
Reading Time: 4 minutes“Path!” Glinda paused so abruptly the six foot necromancer slammed into her, tangling himself in the wild frizz of her white hair. Glinda waved a white diamante-studded glove at the waist-high grass. “This is hardly a path, Snark. This is a swamp!”
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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Once in a Blue Moon
Reading Time: 2 minutesA hungry ghost, pockets full of whatever money he could collect, visits his favorite diner on Halloween
Mr. Butterfield
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen a robot does something right, Dr. R says, “Look, Mr. Butterfield. A breakthrough, Mr. Butterfield. What do you think of that, Mr. Butterfield?” It goes in a box with the other good robots, then trucks come to get them. When you’re good, you go outside.
Worm King
Reading Time: 5 minutesWhile his father’s once-famous bait shop struggles to survive against the threat of an impending storm, Dill encounters an unexpected solution.
Gods and Monsters Installment 16: Red
Reading Time: 7 minutesGabriel awakes to his monotone world. The white sun is reaching fingers through the twisted roots of orchids. As Gabriel looks toward the light, he sees that a flower’s throat is freckled deep crimson. On the table, a cigarette paper is dark red. Everywhere, the world is streaked, stained, and tinted.
Hell in a Handbag
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe earliest account is from our foremother, Rhoda. You know her better as Red Riding Hood. That’s right, she was a real person. Back then, the handbag was still a handbasket, but more on that later.
Gods and Monsters Installment 15: The Dog Star
Reading Time: 9 minutesSometimes, from my prison cell, when the time of year was right and the night was clear, I could see Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Many ancient cultures thought of it as a dog, or a wolf. For me, it was a beacon of hope between the bars. Just one light in the night sky, so bright it looked like a searchlight.
The Last Day
Reading Time: 3 minutesA story about a society in which a mechanism was invented to increase pleasant dreams. Old men prefer to sleep unawakened rather than live. One man tries to resist.
Her Own Bones
Reading Time: 3 minutesGwen examined the table so she didn’t have to meet the impatient eyes of the family members. Had one of these cups of tea held the poison responsible for the corpse lying beside an overturned chair at the head of the table?
In Him, We Know Freedom
Reading Time: 5 minutesWhile burning barrels light the state capital’s torn paint and hunger pains ravage his stomach, a man looks into a mirror, seeing what he could become and reliving what he had to do to survive.
Gods and Monsters Installment 14: Queer Beer
Reading Time: 9 minutesSuddenly, something hard and strong strikes his back, knocking the wind from him, propelling him onto the ground. He thrashes wildly. Two needle sharp spikes pierce his neck. A warm, sensuous peace floods over him. He smiles and despite the beard, looks momentarily like a small happy child.
Seed Hunters
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.
Gods and Monsters Installment 13: Consequences
Reading Time: 8 minutesAt 2:00 am, there are no children about. The police still on duty are sleeping in their cars or hunching over coffee in all-night dives. Even the homeless are asleep, huddled in doorways under blankets of cardboard and crumbled newspaper. But as River walks past, the scent of the sweets weaves into their dreams and makes them smile. Some dream of a time they’d been full of hope. Others live for a while inside illusions, as knights on horseback, or sprouting vast shimmering wings to rise above the city and soar.
The Thief of Pendír: Book 3 of The Book of Dreams series
Reading Time: 10 minutesRo No Na, the thief, breaks into a gangster’s pleasure palace in Pendír, Bijoon, and ends up being chased by gangsters, revolutionaries, clones, and Agent Wood and the Z’Dhia, in the third volume of The Book of Dreams series.
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Humans and Androids as Societal Partners
Reading Time: 8 minutesDo we need new rules for a society where androids are becoming more and more lifelike?
The Shipping Forecast
Reading Time: 4 minutesAs the world untethers from reality, moderate to severe distortion in time, leading to invasions from Normans, Saxons, and Romans in Dover; possible Vikings in Thames. High likelihood of property damage and loss of prevailing cultural norms. Squally showers.