Wilbur could talk. Maybe always could, but at age eleven-months, those were the first words he chose to speak to Lavinia Whateley.
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Daddy Issues
"You know what's stupid?" "What?" "This ship," Bruno screeches as the shuttle shimmies in response to a psionic shock wave. He jerks the control stick to avoid a cephalopod tentacle and the Errant Knight barrel-rolls to the starboard. "Any other design we'd be invisible." "But we're not and go fuck yourself.' For Lei, this ship …
Crash Course in Landing
With a jolt, he is awake and watches the injector needle pull cleanly from his chest as white-hot adrenaline courses through his veins. “Welcome back sir, we will be crashing shortly," claims the jovial west-country-accented voice of his ship's system. Around him is the cyro-chamber and the stench of the chemical bath he called home for …
Trial of Futility
He is too late. The smell of the spell's components linger a moment, cordite and cinnamon, then even that vanishes, leaving behind only the inevitable and the only option left, prayer. His mouth already moves ignoring intellectual objection. Stupidly, he seeks help from up high. A god, demon, something just slightly better would be fine. …
Review: “Crank” by Artur Karlov
Jimmy has no arms, see? Never had any. Was born like this. Almost every baby born after the war is missing parts. Some don't have limbs, like Jimmy. Some have bits of the face missing. Some lack internal organs. Those are the lucky ones. They don't live too long after the cord is cut. Less …
Young Ye’ Old Ye’ Dead Ye’
Leaves swirl from the ground in a sudden wind. A wind five-year-old Ye' Ruo thinks left her mouth along with the words of her wish. A wish uttered hushed and filled with sorrow. She wished simply to, "help." The wind howls and churns the remains of summer in a cyclone of red and yellow. The …
Tam’s Soul
In this life, Tam Duc is eighty-five years old, weighs thirty-eight kilograms and travels from the Northern island of Cát Bà, to Năm Căn on the one leg remaining after meeting a French landmine 72 years ago. It is a journey of 2000 kilometers. Năm Căn is nothing more than the Southernmost tip of Vietnam. …
Revenge for the Love of Roses
The blast disintegrates atoms as it spreads out from ground zero. The city of Louisville, the towns surrounding it, the villages outside them, the farms and hermit shacks and public lands stretching for hundreds of miles, felt nothing as they disappeared. They did not even remain as smears on the ground, or a hole in …
Enraptured
The air smells like incense. Maybe patchouli. Maybe something more narcotic, sinister, it could be poison and Steve wouldn't care. He sits and watches the most beautiful woman he has ever seen in his life dance alone in the middle of a bare stage. She glides as if every muscle in her body were made …
Dive Bar
The place is on the water. It has little umbrellas that have frayed in the wind. The fresh salty air from the gulf can't penetrate the smells of stale beer and greasy food that surround the plywood structure like a fugue. Gulls circle looking for morsels of food. With protesting squawks they fly off when …