The first time Radovan mainlines MindsEyeTM, the dream-memory transports him three decades back in time to an afternoon in 2010. Artist’s charcoal clasped between thumb and forefinger, he sketches his thirty-year-old wife Analena’s face—side-swept bangs, dimples, a prominent lower lip—then the denim carrier that holds Beth. Their infant faces forward so she can engage the…
When a dream dies, it burns into ashes that then scatter through the atmosphere. Particles might settle alongside river shores, brush across waving treetops, alight on a deer’s fur. Maybe some will land in a human’s eye, drawing a tear that becomes a salty elegy for a future that will never be. Then even those…
The museum warehouse was more than ample space for Polyphemus, and he could make it a true home with just a little effort. That’s what Gale, his social worker from the Department of Mythical Beings, said. She was helping him to settle in on his first night. She had found him the accommodations and even…
Her bare feet hit the pavement with desperate force. When she begged me to help, her voice was faint but strong, scared but trusting. She clung to my back as we rode off on my hand-me-down Harley, and I could smell the sterile lab she’d escaped from, the lingering scent of the chemicals they’d injected…
In Bensonville, no one plans for a career as an assailant; it just sort of happens the way one catches a cold or loses their keys. Most of our forests have burned, the ore is gone, and recycled material is worth its weight in gold. None of this compares to the double-digit unemployment rate or…
I was stuck in front of the mirror, running late. Mark had already been shed, his work clothes tossed on the ground, and in the mirror his short perma-bedhead had grown into Hailey’s shoulder-length curls. Hailey’s basics emerged soon after, Mark’s stout musculature slithering and softening into the proper proportions: C-cups and hips, and enough…
1. Having just successfully invented teleportation, you’ll take a moment to admire your own skill in miniaturizing the Wearable Teleportation Initiator Device, or WTID (you’re still workshopping the name), to the size of a jellybean. You will literally pat yourself on the back for a job well done because, aside from your cat Quark, no…
Jim kept his head down, kept walking. Ignored the familiar shadowed entrance of the bar. He didn’t need it. He didn’t. A block later, it was there at the periphery of his vision again. The bar only appeared to those who craved what it served. And tonight, the air was freezing, his exposed nose and…
There’s a cockroach in my apartment. It scuttled beneath the washing machine before I left for work this morning and in the time I’ve gone, it’s grown three times the size. It’s spawned miraculously, and now there are hundreds of cockroaches, spilling from my cabinets every time I open them. It’s laid eggs in the…
“I don’t believe you’re real,” I say to her. She laughs, then blows softly into my eyes. I have to blink. When I open them again she’s still there. “See? I’m as real as you are,” she says. We lay there in bed for hours facing each other, me under the covers, her on top….
