When you start this meditation, keep in mind that you’re not doing it to feel alive, or relax, or avoid decomposing. You should simply experience whatever is going on in your corpse. From moment to moment. Gently focus your full attention on your breathing. Maybe you can find a hint of a breeze going past […]
The Sun sucked in her gravity, drawing the planets taut about her waist. It’d taken far too long to bead them all onto her 1-dimensional strings. She wasn’t giving up now. Planets shuddered from the strain, beaded so tightly that they really didn’t fit, bulging on her solar flares. “I think they’re just too small […]
Alexei Dubov has a kind of magic. Maybe a mutation. Newspapers aren’t sure. Scholars debate. His lawyers argue he cannot help it—and anyway, who can say the things he doubles are less real than their originals? “After all, how can you forge a person?” they ask, and point to me, miserable and silent in the […]
“Patrick McMahon died two months ago, defending his country,” Father Cunningham intones. Most of us in the church look over at Patrick, where he sways in the first pew, to see if he reacts. He doesn’t. Patrick has not spoken a word since the two army nurses led him, with a tight grip on each […]
Mimsy peered into the dark chamber. One hand daintily held her skirts up off the dirty floor. The other gripped a curved, snarled, shining blade. “Hello? Anyone in there?” Her melodious voice infiltrated every cranny and nook, dank corner and dusty crevice. At the sound of her chiming query, darkness bulged and strained against the […]
Warrington had really no right to be angry. He was not engaged to Virginia, merely engaged with her in a somewhat tempestuous summer flirtation. Down in his heart he knew it for just that. But he was angry no less, for she had allowed a “hulking ass” newly arrived at the Inn to “hog her […]
When Althea opened the sorcerer’s book, a pressed leaf like a tiny green star fell out into her lap. Inside the book, words hand-written in long, loopy scrawl undulated like waves, the ink blue as the deep sea where Althea had seen a boy thrown overboard in sacrifice to the Little God of the finned […]
Oh what terror, to fly a pig in the Dorseny sky. Fists clutching Bella’s ears, Palo chokes against the crosswind. Bella oinks, and he loosens his thighs around her flanks, but it’s hard. The ground recedes, a checkerboard of green and yellow around Dorseny Town. Five years since the war with the Heelings, and takeoff […]
The winged infant adjusted his diaper and blew a curl of golden hair away from his face. He wobbled on intoxicated legs, steadied himself and accepted the dart that was handed to him. “What’ll it be this time?” he asked. The bearded man rubbed his chin and considered the question. The patrons of the tavern […]
The house at 213 Myrtle Street wore an enchantment that could obscure it when it so desired. This was a handy skill, particularly when salesmen roved the streets or teenagers skulked about after dark, eggs in hand. Now there was a realtor at the gate. The smell of dozens of strange, foreign houses clung to […]