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…
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…
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…
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…
The basement is brightly lit, long fluorescent lighting driving out any shadows in the anthropological centre she calls her tomb. The aisles are long, the carefully laid out shelves crowded with neatly labeled white boxes. She wonders if the boxes contain other ghosts, but she has never seen anyone else lingering here like she does….
Harriet was going slowly along the road, avoiding putting her feet on any cracks in the pavement, when she heard the man screaming. It was a long, loud scream – the kind of scream you might call blood-curdling – and she stumbled to a halt. Setting her foot down just before a crack she looked…
I’m pulled from my numbness by a screaming tea kettle. Downstairs, pots are banging, cabinet doors slamming, dishes clattering against each other. Purposeful noise consciously made, lifting me from the silence I was drowning in. I breathe a sigh of relief. I sit up in bed and listen, unsure of how long I’ve been awake,…
“They say you are the one who can attend to my needs.” A cloaked figure waits at my doorstep. Behind her, twilight drags its dark, feathered wing across the horizon. A fortnight ago, the sun might have lingered. But the seasons are turning; soon, there will be frost. For now, we endure only bitter winds,…
They have amazing toys and gadgets here. Portals and matter creators and holographic projections. They especially love playing with time: rewinding, changing perspective, throwing variables in to create new iterations of dead scenarios. They have every fancy gizmo and innovation from the start to end of time at their disposal and they don’t mind me…
