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…
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,…
