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...
In 1921, he flew from the Great Rift Valley, along the trails left by the ancient Martians, to find the Temple of the Sun. It was buried, like so much else on Mars, in red sands over the course of millennia, but that meant nothing when you had a native to escort you to their ancestral home.
"So, how can we breathe here?" Pete asked the small, silver creature before him.
It sat in the biplane, strapped in, looking ridiculously small in the pilot's seat. "Air bubble," it replied, fiddling with the dials.
Pete had never flown in a biplane...
The city was empty. The day had swept by on the brush of a filthy broom, skittering over the edge of the world. We were happy.
But we'd always secretly reveled in disaster situations. When the status-quo was torn asunder, that's when we came alive. It was the status quo that we couldn't deal with.
The last bits of ash were falling out of the sky. The TV said that this might be the end of it. But they also said it might not. Storm clouds at night make the world all that much darker. So we lit our candles,...
The first time I saw Tommy, I knew he was a total douche. I don't allow my sister to date douches; shit — no brother should. That's rule number 2.
Rule number 1, in case you are wondering, is that you don't interfere with your sister's romances. But I take exception with douches.
Of course, there's a perfectly civil way to address his low-life status without resorting to a politically un-savvy term like "douche," which can alienate the polite, women, and my parents equally well, but anyone who knows me will say there ain't a bone of misogyny in this...
I woke up this morning fuzzier than usual.
It's easier to remember in my sleep but the memories are now tied with hopefulness--your hopefulness. Your jacket was cold on the outside as I hugged you, and I remember your body warm as I slipped my hand in and tried to squeeze. I remember you tried to kiss me goodbye and I moved from it as I sobbed. I didn't want to miss that kiss but still I moved.
The journey alone has been quiet. You text me or email me or my own brain will write your words for me...
"Dragonflies are good luck," his grandmother used to say. "They are fairies' horses. Their wings spread wishes and wonder."
He remembered that and not much else about her. They would sit in the grass by the shore of the lake. He used to spend three weeks every summer out at his grandparents house. They picked blueberries and chopped wood, made cookies and walked in the woods.
He was an adult now. They were long dead.
His daughter stood in front of him, frowning, hands onm hips. "That's not true, daddy. Dragonflies are dragonflies, not horses. And fairies don't exist."
He...
2070. Je regarde par la fenêtre. Les douze coups viennent de sonner à l'horloge. Sur la place, dehors, des petits chalets de toile sont montés, et regorgent de victuailles et de boissons pour les fêtards. La foule se presse, danse au son des violons, et s'embrasse et s'embrasse pour se souhaiter la bonne année.
Je tends la main vers la petite table, j'attrape mon bol de tisane et le porte à mes lèvres. Ma main tremble, ses veines sont saillantes et sa peau fripée. Les tâches qui la parsèment sont le décompte des années.
2070, le monde n'a pas changé....
I was born inside a leather and land lace tomato breast. My father was a blues singer and my mother was a vegetarian prostitute. My toenails were always brittle, and my ribs aplenty. However, my vertebrae had a slight curvature, which lent itself to future sideways glances--both coming and going.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. It wasn't always rainy inside of my leather and lace tomato breast womb, but occasionally some foreign government, or Delta slide-playing red rooster would seed the environs of my leather and lace tomato breast womb. Seeding has been outlawed m]for military use by...
The floorboard creaked. The house came alive and... walked.
It did not walk as people walk, as things designed to move would move. No, a house is not meant to ambulate, not meant to be in a place different from the place it had always been. That was the first trial, overcoming years of inactivity, millenia of tradition.
But the house was determined to leave its lot, after its lot in life had fallen. All around it, other houses had fallen, eaten away by neglect, time, disuse. And while this house had not had resident or human inhabitant for far...
Giving in wasn't an option. "2,4,6,8! We don't want to integrate!" shouted his T-Shirt. Well, the left hand side. The right blared out "We're ALL in this (body) together…"
Both the Prosecution and the Defence barristers sighed at the witness's garb, shuffled papers, breathed slowly, and were grateful he was wearing anything at all. Both were getting paid. From the same bank account, in fact. They both rose as the Right Honourable Judge Jewel took in the room, and then her seat.
The clerk stood and announced in a notably less bored tone than usual, "Giles #3 versus Giles #1,2...