Rat-tat tat-tat-tat. Someone was knocking on the door. This would have been strange enough, given she travelled here alone, but Simone knew the other side was bare. Nothing surrounded the doorway but crumbling rubble of the building that had been, the inside gone over to weeds and weather. The door stood in the ruin, a…
The third time the ocean comes to our door, there’s no sister to wake me. I’m roused from my slumber by the lapping of waves and tiptoe past our father’s bedroom door. He won’t rise for another hour or two. By then, the ocean will have receded once more. He’ll wonder at the damp sand…
When I step off the bus it starts pouring, taking everyone by surprise—except me. Fellow travelers jostle for position under the bus stop’s overhang, kids shrieking and parents scolding them to stay out of puddles. A businessman grumbles about not having his umbrella: “The one day all week we were supposed to have blue skies!”…
“That carbon scoring came from laser blasts, not a hot re-entry. You might be able to fool the others, Tara, but not me. You should know better. That’ll cost you extra.” Janae side-eyed me while tilting her head towards the marks on the glider while shoving her hands deeper into the pockets of her coverall….
Vincent sat close to the furnace, sweat dripping off his forehead. His legs ached with the strain of trying to sit still, trying to show that he wasn’t nervous. “Who’s it going to?” Freda, the glassblower asked. She sat at a bench in front of the furnace with an ethereal sort of presence that made…
Down in the valley, beneath trees whose trunks rise evenly spaced and straight but whose gnarled arms twine high above, a woman kneels digging. She digs with her hands, nails tearing. Bright-beaked birds watch, hopping among the risen roots. One chirps a sad melody, but the song is lost beneath the waterfall’s thundering: a…
She’s going to fall and I can’t do anything about it. The small toy truck on the ground rolls forward and hits the wall. I still can’t do anything about it. Fran wavers forever. Forever on the third step, arms wind-milling in slow motion to grab the banister—to fall forward instead of back. She doesn’t…
Human Child, Thistledown had called him, when her fairy hand wrapped around his chubby fingers and led him to this place so many seasons ago. But Human Child took too long to say when there were games to be played, dragonflies to dance with in the waterfall’s spray, or frogs with whom to sing. He…
Vera rotated the lever to transfer the next set of refugees into the airlock. Below, the Earth glowed red like a blossoming rose in a time-lapse video, the petals unfolding, spreading out across the seas. “Do we have an update on the toll?” She asked Avery through her com link. Avery sighed. “You’re just torturing…
My splashbike squelches as it leaves the concrete. I’m airborne, wet hair flailing, stinging my cheeks. I love this part, the almost not-quite making it to the other side. But despite the constant shifting rain I hit a cantilever. My splashbike bobbles, the specially designed tread of the tires defying gravity until I’ve got enough…
