There was blood on my pillow.
My nose was dry. I hadn't bit my cheek. I hadn't somehow lost a tooth. A quick examination of my skull told me that it remained intact.
Oh, duh, I have DNA-Vision. I forget sometimes.
I scanned the blood on my pillow. It wasn't mine.
So where had it come from?
"Ah ha! It was me!" yelled someone from the foot of my bed.
It was my arch-nemesis, The Hemophiliac. Of course!
"What have you done?!" I roared.
"I snuck into your bedroom last night and bled on your pillow! But don't worry; I...
“They’ve been sat still for 38 minutes. It’s clear they’ve just dug in to defend their flag. I say…”
“You say…” 117 interrupted his Squad Leader, who couldn’t have looked more pissed.
“John, enough of your shit!” He slid a finger across his throat in what he knew would be a futile gesture. “We’ve got the same tacticals as Red Team. We have the same number of cadets. They're boxed in. I say…”
117 coughed. “You say… er… Sir.” I think he genuinely tried not to sound insubordinate. He failed.
“All right, soon to be ‘ex’ cadet. Out with it.”...
2070.
Dadi saes the Fires arnt the saem az wen HE wus a boy, wen the Nasties furst desided that storis cud be bad fur us. It wus bak then wen they also saed jewels wer bad. I can't se wy tho, az ther all shiny and glittry, but Dadi saes the jewels wer to blam for al the money bein taken from the pore and stuf. Maybe its becos jewels ar wurth so much.
Aniwai, this buk burning isnt az big as wen Dadi was iung, befor he gru up and becam a Nasty himself. Now Dadi finds buks...
The dapper man picked up a penny. Having stopped, he was hit by an unsuspecting driver who failed to see him get skewered by the starting handle from the high cab of the grocer's van. At first I smiled for having placed the coin, specially bought at auction 68 years from now. And then… absolutely nothing happened.
When SciFi authors tell you of the Grandfather Paradox, don't believe a bloody word. I'd spent a fortune, and most of my adult life pushing the boundaries of Quantum Symmetry, SuperStrings and a host of other areas of Science and Technology. All for...
Until now, she'd never thought of herself as pretty.
Truth be told, until a year ago, she'd never thought of herself as all. The concept of self was one that she'd been struggling with for the past twelve months, and she was finally starting to get a grip on it.
The first step had been coming up with a name for herself. Her entire life, she'd been referred to as "that lot", or, at best, "the taller group". She'd been part of a team...a slightly taller team than the other teams, true, but a minor difference in height does not...
"Someone left the goddammed gate open again, and the dog took off," my father yelled from the backyard.
Me and Bill were in the back shed smoking a crooked hash joint. When he started yelling, Bill panicked and dropped it, and then crushed it under his foot. But he didn't realize he wasn't wearing any shoes. He screamed as the cherry burnt into his sole.
I swallowed hard and waited for the inevitable.
Four deep breaths later, the door swung open on rusty hinges and my dad stood there, Taking up the whole of the doorway, blocking out the sun....
He had climbed the steep Acropolis, seeking Athena Parthenos (the virgin), every time work or pleasure or strange fates called him to Athens. Yet today he paused by the Temple of Dionysis, only about a third of the way up the olive treed slope. One of the several custodians, some in plastic and metal cells, others, like this young lady beneath whatever shade the Gods (and strategic umbrellas) could provide. Something about her effortless attention, seeing all who paused or passed, while seemingly merged into a thick hard back, caught his attention.
She sat, regally, letting the Sun and people...
Giles inhaled the drink and closed his eyes, fluttering his eyelashes.
“A hint of dark oak definitely.”
“Perhaps a deeper bouquet like a rusty copper,” Lynton replied.
Giles cradled his cigar lovingly, and crunched on some spare ribs.
“Why would you call a a fine cigar a Cuban he mused? The Cubans were incredibly common
and impoverished. I mean it’s a symbol. It stands for something more.”
“Why would you call a decrepit decaying old bat a Queen?” Lynton replied, that’s the English
language Giles, cut a vowel here twist a syllable there; it’s a kind of phonetic prostitution,”...
"I'm with Stupid"
The T-Shirt slogan on the Soul in front of me seemed peculiarly poignant. Stupid he most certainly was, having been 'gathered' with what the lesser demons called the "Camelot curse" - trading their immortal spirits for a lottery win, which regularly brought in hundreds for as little as £10 a life - rarely did they actually define exactly how much they wanted to win. It was all about the rules, really. HIM upstairs… you know… insisted.
The obligatory 'get out' clause, the battle of wits, wasn't required by HIM, but NICK said there wasn't any fun without...
My sister signed me up for yoga the day before yesterday. And all I could think about were the yoga girl's toenails. She was the participant in front of me, on a pink mat patterned with yellow flowers. Sitting in the most uncomfortable position of my life, it was her toenails that bothered me. Sitting 10 inches in front of my face, yellowed and cracked, with an attempted cover up of aquamarine polish. "Excuse me, " I wanted to say, "That toenail polish does nothing for you." Or perhaps, "Excuse me, could you help me get my elbow out of...