We find each other on the road towards the failing Span. The sky is still golden here, every star, every path and confluence a part of the greater whole. We each recall, together and apart, when our own skies seemed this indomitable. And each of our backs bend in empathy beneath the weight of gold….
Ruth is slaughtering lava gremlins when her solar bank beeps. Low voltage warning. She clicks thrice, and her 8-bit rapier pokes the boss into a spray of orange pixels. She checks her laptop’s wattmeter, then plugs in the powerbike she’s sitting on. “Have no fear, folks. A little haze storm can’t kill the stream.” She…
The first time I performed the ritual and Stevie came back to life, as if no time had passed between her last breath and her second first one, I was relieved, ecstatic even, incredulous that it had worked. It had all seemed so hokey. Rubbing her body with eucalyptus oil, the various herbs she’d collected…
He drove up from the city in July of ‘67, to teach me how to turn words into money, to speak magic to bend people to my will. His red Chevrolet gleamed like Eve’s apple as he eased into the gravel lot at Pearl’s. I sat at a splintery picnic table, heat hazing down in…
The house is moribund, and the door closing behind me is shocking against the silent space. I hover in the hallway. You break away, move directly up the carpeted stairs. I can almost hear the gate at the top moan, just about hear your footsteps stop in her room. I hesitate, then follow. You sit…
Fifteen years. I count them by converting Standard to Gregorian badly while my feet move forward without me. It’s been fifteen years since I’ve seen another human and here’s one at the Stones on Ferocina underneath the glowing rings and stars, swirling a red gourd-bottle while he stares into the bonfire like a human would,…
Meagan always painted her the same way: nude and spread-eagled on a bed of buttery pink flowers, red feathers sprouting from bare shoulders, cheeks flushed by pollen. The spectre of a sneeze dances in the endless, liminal space between the bridge of her nose and the oval of her lips. She is stunning in her…
Marty is maybe twenty people from the teal void that fills the humming doorframe when he waves to the woman with the clipboard. She is wearing a grey suit and her hair is cut short. She smiles as she comes over.“I don’t think I can do this,” he says. He keeps his voice low, but…
There is someone in our house.It’s just after 2 am—I’m lying awake in bed.Loud noises from downstairs. Three people, maybe four.They’re looking for something. I get out of bed.Jon doesn’t wake. Mia nestles into the warmth I leave behind.I hear a voice coming from the kitchen, pubescent, male.“Hurry and find it, we’re gonna be late…
I feel the city. My tarsus heavy, my chitin soft. I am too old for the mission they believe that I am on. For the destruction they believe me capable of. Sensing the helicopters in the distance, feeling the steady vibrations of their blades through the air, my lateral eyes catch movement on either side….
