Moll broke the news to her husband in the neurology visitors lounge on the fifth floor. “He’s rallied,” she said. “Rallied?” “He’s going to pull through, George.” “Thank god,” he said. The cherrywood casket, he thought, and the catering. And we’ll have to do something about the eidolon. George left his wife at the hospital…
I craft my face each morning, coaxing the bees into the perfect alignment. Or, most mornings, into the good-enough alignment. Friendly takes extra effort, and the bees aren’t having it this morning. I settle for less and head to work. The bees, once aligned, give a semblance of human skin, and they fill out my…
Emma understands that the world might be ending. Wormholes. Soft spots. A parallel universe that’s starting to leak through a hundred different holes in a hundred different cities. One of which happens to be just outside her house, right next to the mailbox, at the end of the driveway. How much longer do we…
There is a robot on Mars. This is a problem. It was put up/down there, initially, by itself, just a tangle of cement-printer nozzles on a cluster of all-terrain wheels, a slapped on sticker with the designation “RVR-1,” and pre-programmed instructions to extrude an entire village worth of habitat domes. And so it did, sending…
The God the AIs built hovers in the sky like a second moon, the metal surface pitted with acid and roughed up with steel wool to mimic the unimaginable passage of time the AIs claim the God has existed, even though it only appeared last year. “God has always been there,” the AIs answer…
The hospital bed cradles my body like some pharaoh on display at The Honolulu Academy of Arts. My fingers tremble as I adjust midnight-blue candles. On an aluminum tray that’s bent where Cousin Kevin leaned on it, The Book of Tar lays above my heart, oozing black tendrils. Am I ready?Fuck, is anyone ever “ready”…
Dalisay squeezed through the cluster of banyan trees the dwendehad told her to keep an eye out for. Then she grimaced. Past the curtains of their impenetrable vines, stood the severed waist of a woman. The manananggal must still be on the prowl. Dalisay’s mother used to terrorize her nights with tales about them. About…
His polished shield was strapped to his left arm, leaving his hand free to hold the lantern. His right hand gripped the sword, although Honorius doubted he would use it. What had once been a palace was now ruins. Vines climbed the pillars and moss grew upon the damp ground. Rain dripped from holes in…
Gentle rain fell the day I visited the ocean for the first time. The wind turbines in the distance were barely visible through the thin, silver sheets that fell from the sky. They stood like sentinels, clad in gleaming white armor against the looming horizon, arms outstretched as if to hold off a coming storm….
Not again. On the day of the ceremony. Talk about bad timing. I stare at the barrier floating in front of me, willing it to go away. It stubbornly remains. It materialized when I got tangled trying to put on my formal armor. It always happens when I get angry or nervous, losing control in…
