Recent Stories
The lead mission scientist started packing up her equipment. It was time to leave for her next assignment. A pity, as this world was one of the most beautiful she had ever seen, and she had enjoyed her time breathing fresh air after the staleness of deep space.
She closed her eyes and let the warm wind winnow through her hair and across her skin. Then she gazed out at the salty waves rippling in across the tidal sands below. A long line of her footprints stretched across the silty strand. A parallel set led back.
The inn sat at the edge of a forest on one side, an ocean another, mountains the third. The road that led you there, that ended at its door, rode through--on the whole--pleasant countryside, habitable land.
Poll stirred the stew set before him, whilst a mental spoon stirred the thought stew between his ears.
Min put her breather to her face, puffing from the climb.
Getting old, she chided herself. Were she still seventy, she could have made it in half the time, and not needed the breather.
When the Colossus stops moving, the silence hits the island like a thunderclap. The creak and screech of its enormous limbs have been a constant companion to each of us since birth, a lovingly cooed lullaby, now so suddenly, so violently, absent. As far back as anyone can remember, the Colossus has patrolled the waters around our island, hurling boulders the size of houses at menacing pirates and invading fleets, never tiring, never stopping, until the day before yesterday it slowed, making two rounds instead of its usual three, and then, a day later, grinding ponderously to a halt.
Noon sun. Busted streetlamps and rusted shutters. Graffiti in layers of peeling paint. Brick walls and stalls of the Newtown Bazaar. The press of the crowd.
Mad Hour, we call it, and rightly so: who would enter the marketplace with so many people about, each one a potential carrier? Yes, I see the paradox. Reminds me of something I heard once, from a taxi driver, before all this, before Paellis totus: "Can't get a cab in this city," he told me. "Too many taxis." It's just like that: no one goes into market at Mad Hour--too many people.
by Claude Lalumiere
*******Editor's Note: Adult Story for Adult Readers Only*******
Published on May 24, 2019
by Rob Butler
Published on May 23, 2019
by jez patterson
Published on May 22, 2019
by J.S. Veter
Published on May 21, 2019
by Dafydd McKimm
Published on May 20, 2019
by P.G. Streeter
Published on May 17, 2019
