The first time I watched a man die, I was sitting on my mother’s lap, eating the last of the season’s figs. “Swallow.” Even when condemning a man to death, Mother’s voice was like a lyre’s song, so that you considered yourself honored to be addressed, regardless of her demand. At the time, I did…
Detective Renaud burst onto the metaphysical plane at the entrance to the Night Market. He absently patted himself down, an idiosyncrasy to realign his consciousness with his dream-self and away from his physical body, asleep somewhere in the Dream Enforcement offices of the material plane. Striding quickly to the Night Market gate, Renaud flashed his…
Its olfactory system comes online. Gideon initiates trial 152 for the integration of a human mind with a manufactured body system. Scientists peer down at Gideon in the center of the surgical suite. “Stimulus one,” he says to the crowded room. The initial compound the synthetic being detects when stimulus one activates is Mentha x…
“We’ve really solved our two-body problem,” Robin said. She started to laugh but she hated how it scratched, amplified on the suit radio. “Sh,” Aaron said. “Don’t.” Through the thick gloves she couldn’t feel the pressure of his grip, but something about his voice made it clear he was squeezing. She squeezed back, her forearms…
Lily glances down at the handwritten letter. Her hand trembles as she sips lychee wine. The drink cools her throat, tingling her wrinkled skin. She recalls the day her granddaughter was born. A cherubic baby, Mei weighed ten pounds and three ounces. Lily believes Mei’s size brought good luck and prosperity upon the family. Even…
I was having the worst kind of day you could have on a long-haul transport—the kind where your fusion reactor is making funny noises. Not ha-ha funny. Threatening to explode funny. Which was kind of ha-ha funny, because once you’ve been alone on a long-haul transport for 473 days with no human contact, everything is…
Kara stared through the rain-fogged window, hoping, praying even, for escape. And, as always, escape appeared in the form of an oak door with an old-fashioned brass knob that twitched in anticipation of her touch like an overeager puppy. “Turn me!” it seemed to say as, for the first time in her seventeen years of…
She could see the ones that had come before her, and after, that had perched in the chair in the waiting room of the auto dealer shop. They superimposed over her body like layers of frosting on a cake, a finger here, a curly bit of hair there. One tapped their hiking boot. One hummed…
The first scales grow on the backs of my hands, flesh-colored and brittle. They itch something awful as they push through my skin, and I pick at them like I would at fresh scabs, although you’re not supposed to. Mother hobbles toward me over the sharp rocks. “Stop it. Don’t you know how lucky you…
The dreams begin with Dixie’s first menstrual cycle: Thick trees with spidery limbs overhanging an almost-rotted boardwalk; moss-like fog giving everything a bluish-grey complexion; a muddy bed on both sides, sizable enough to serve as a reptilian’s den; a lullaby of chorusing crickets… And then: The planks dissolving into a body of water; air hot…
