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.
Reading Time: 10 minutesA prisoner with no knowledge of their own identity is kept in solitary confinement, visited daily by human projections designed to prevent mental deterioration. When the opportunity for escape is presented, a dormant instinct resurfaces in the prisoner, and the need to fulfill this drive supplants the desire for freedom.
Reading Time: 8 minutesWhen he leaves Bert’s in the wee hours before first light, River feels extremely foolish, but warmer and happier than he can remember. Huck lands on his shoulder, squawking loudly. He complains noisily the entire walk home.
Gods and Monsters Installment 12: The Mystic Eye Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutesJune joined the Memory Keeper team to help her family forge a path to abundance. When it became harder to meet quota, June learned that she was trapped in a business that viewed her as another commodity. And sometimes, the consequences of faith in an idea are greater than we can imagine.
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn the dark, something shambles toward you, its squelch squelch squelch sound getting louder, and louder. Is it here for you?
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen I get the call for a Code 43, I have to pull my truck over and consult my Codex of Supernatural Beasts and Cryptids to make sure I’m not mistaken. “Forty-three?” I ask over the walkie. Maybe Dispatch meant 42 (Mothman) or 44 (Batsquatch). “A Nightraven? You sure?”
Reading Time: 3 minutesSome expected the aliens to solve the problems of humanity, while others were afraid of genocide or enslavement. But it all turned out differently.
Reading Time: 6 minutesSan Francisco has a wealth of vampires. The city calls to them. Perhaps it is the early morning fog that keeps the sun from their flesh a bit longer than most places. Perhaps it is the nightlife. Perhaps it is the dearth of werewolves, who tend toward more rural haunts. Or maybe they just feel at home in the cool, grey city of love.
Gods and Monsters Installment 11: Cool Grey City of Love Read More »
Reading Time: 11 minutesMirabyi has been tapped to join the moon colony to explore the possibility of converting the dusty surface to life sustaining soil. Her experiments have unexpected results and maybe not the good kind.
Reading Time: 3 minutesWith his life spiraling out of control, and a desire for revenge taking over his mind, a man takes drastic actions.
Reading Time: 4 minutesThey whisper it like rumors between old wives: in confidence, in shock, in need. They complain over it, bawdy and slurred, between men and their beers—the secret that everyone knows. All of it doing my work for me, letting everyone from cottage to castle-side know I’m here, and what I can do.
Reading Time: 26 minutesCan Allii come to grips with the pain her family has inflicted on a nation and heal a land wounded by centuries of injustice, hate, and fear. (And find the killer of her beloved stepmother).
Reading Time: 6 minutes“It sounds,” River says, “like the orchid is smarter than the bee.” He considers. “I’d still rather be a bee though; I’d like to be able to fly.”
Reading Time: 5 minutesI 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: 9 minutesFrom his booth inside the club, Gabriel sees her spinning on the dance floor, beautiful as a fallen star, deadly as the arsenic hidden inside the seed of a perfect apple.
Reading Time: 26 minutesYoung Daisy must evade the clutches of forest-dwelling witch Madame Sosostris and Malcolm, the town brute, as she tries to solve the mystery of her friend Violet’s disappearance.
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.
Reading Time: 4 minutesDiscriminatory 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.
Nexav Workplace Harassment Training Module (Required) Read More »
Reading Time: 6 minutesHe has found a gift. The kitchen, which at home smelled of disappointment and lost hope, is now a place of amelioration. But when the full moon rises, he hears the night call his name. It sounds like fear. It smells like nightmare. It tastes like death. He departs with the sun.
Gods and Monsters Installment 8: Sweet Dreams are Made of These Read More »
Reading Time: 6 minutesTechnology allows us to revisit the most cherished moments of our lives. But is that a good thing?
Reading Time: 18 minutesDragons can’t lie, right? That’s what the legends say. So, when Guy finds himself at the wrong end of a failed heist, he puts that knowledge to the test. Compatriots dead. Hope gone. And his last chance at life is convincing a dragon to let him go.
Reading Time: 4 minutesWe 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: 5 minutesGuilt, melancholy, and the lost soul of a love form the basis of this twist on the paranormal/magical romance.
Reading Time: 8 minutesChip, Tom, and Brian are never found, or at least not most of them. There are only remnants: a stray finger, a discarded shoe with a foot still inside… Only one entire body is discovered amidst the carnage. It is that of an unknown man, naked and unmarked, save for a hole through his heart.
Gods and Monsters Installment 7: Heaven Can Wait Read More »
Reading Time: 21 minutesTrapped in an experiment in faster-than-light space travel, the captain of the ship searches for what went wrong.
Reading Time: 4 minutesBranch 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: 7 minutesRiver is strong, nimble and has the element of surprise. Brian and Tom lie back on damp earth, as if sleeping. River kicks Chip’s face. All of his rage and disappointment, all his sorrow and fear explode in righteous anger.
Gods and Monsters Installment 6: Wild Animals in the Halls of Learning Read More »
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhile 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: 18 minutesIn the future, our dreams are mass entertainment … or a weapon of mass destruction.
Reading Time: 6 minutesA week after Gabriel moves in, Kristjan leaps from the window. He hangs in the air, twisting for a moment like an autumn leaf, before falling thirteen floors to the hard, hard pavement.
Gods and Monsters Installment 5: Hotel Tail Gate Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutesA first contact story about the idea that before anything else, perhaps they have to test for biological compatibility.
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn 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: 15 minutesA physics professor and his student on a plane argue about the possibility of infinite alternate universes, while being robbed blind by a bratty kid. The professor bets the student that even the most unlikely event possible must happen, leading to three very confused Confederate Cavalry charging down the aisle.
Reading Time: 5 minutesGabriel arrives in San Francisco at dusk. He’s dropped off in the Tenderloin by a man desperate to be rid of him. Gabriel’s presence in his car is like the scent of mortality.
Reading Time: 4 minutesA distant relation is bequeathed to someone whose tenuous employment on the outskirts of humanity makes him a less than ideal custodian.
Reading Time: 4 minutesTotally narcissistic, Electra loved admiring her herself in the mirror. One day a wish turned her to stone gazing in a mirror at herself for eternity. She was mostly happy with this situation, until her old, dying husband visits her and gets a wish of his own.
Reading Time: 4 minutesAzabelle 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: 10 minutesDesperate for cash, Nick and his friend plot a home invasion. They picked the wrong house.
Reading Time: 7 minutesAt eighteen, when Gabriel leaves the orphanage, the sisters breathe a sigh of relief. He has never been any trouble. Never talked back; indeed, rarely talked at all. He is obedient, clean, and scentless. The nuns can find no fault in him, but neither can they feel affection. He makes them forget Christ and contemplate Gabriel. He induces guilt. His very silence screams for attention. He is a shadow in the soul.
Gods and Monsters Installment 3: Music and Moths Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutesA Hungarian folktale about young girl seeking to rectify injustice done to her sisters.
Reading Time: 6 minutesLightly amusing modern-feel fantasy mashup about an unlikely partnership between a budget-price necromancer and his student locked in an unusual business model.
Reading Time: 4 minutesShe 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: 21 minutesA serial killer is playing havoc in the city-state of Sheebatiya. Can Allii uncover the killer before fear pushes the city into anarchy?
Reading Time: 8 minutesGabriel is much more unusual than a virgin birth. Granted, human virgin birth is miraculous, but in many species of fish, lizards, insects, and sharks, virgin birth is the norm. It is helpful to remember that a miracle is not necessarily good, it is simply unnatural.
Gods and Monsters Installment 2: Beginnings of River and Gabriel Read More »
Reading Time: 5 minutesA vampire, attempting to adapt to Western customs, sends her Christmas list to Santa.
Reading Time: 6 minutesTimestealing is an art. And a business. And a service. A good timestealer can predict what the next best-seller will be – most of the time.
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe 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: 7 minutesMy love affairs ever end thus. I always long for them to turn out differently. It’s so disheartening. If only I didn’t fall in love so often with these warm-blooded vessels of nutrition. I constantly swear I’ll convert, become a celibate bloodsucker, a monastic mosquito, a vamp nun. But then I see some sun-glazed man smelling of day, and it begins again.
Gods and Monsters Installment 1: Wherein we meet the three Fates Read More »
Reading Time: 16 minutesWhen Janza, a bodyguard-for-hire meets a suspicious merchant, her personal code and memories of the oppression suffered by her people battle for her soul.
