“Atlas, scan Paradise Station and give me a radio lock. Prepare for broadcast.” The ship’s computer acknowledged my command with a couple blinks of light and then chirped when the com opened up. “Paradise, this is the captain of the heavy cruiser, Atlas. We currently have...
I was twenty the first time I entered the Valley of Shadows. It is a place that ruins what it touches. Madness, desolation, violence, mayhem, they’re not words of description, but words of definition. These are not the things which describe the valley. They are...
Kraken class meteor miners were top of the line one hundred and twenty years ago when they were first launched into space. The tech was good enough that all of them were still in service. They’d had upgrades over the years and all of the...
The man found himself in complete darkness, but that’s not what concerned him. He wasn’t alone in the darkness either, but that was also of no concern to him. The others were captives, like himself, presumably bound with silk cords to a bolted-down chair, like...
The Somber Starlight Roadhouse didn’t seem like a creepy motel when I pulled into it. Quite the contrary, in fact. I thought it was nice, or at least, far from the worst place I had ever stayed in. It had an adjacent gas station & convenience...
After several days and hundreds of miles of traveling by stagecoach, Thorogood had finally arrived at his long-dreaded destination of Fogs Dwelling. It was a drab, inauspicious little frontier town built upon the very edges of the Howling Woods, a fabled old-growth forest that had...
The world was small, like a tiny blue and white marble whirling on a sheet of black glass. Peppering it like glitter were thousands of stars. Lunar Module Pilot Marcus Windthrope witnessed it all from the exterior of the International Space station. Sweat beaded his...
“Hey, you’ve reached Aaron and Katie. We aren’t home right now but leave us a message, and we will get back to you! Thanks!” “Katie, this is your mother. You didn’t call last night and missed lunch with us today. I am getting very worried. Please...
My name is Daniel Burgess. I’m the photography coordinator for a public relations and marketing agency in Chicago. At least, that’s what it says on my business card. I’m not so sure what I am, anymore. Just before dawn, I dragged myself out of my apartment...
Ugh, my head. I know bad hangovers. I know hangovers so bad, no cold shower or energy drink can fix them. I know what taking a punch feels like. I was seventeen when my coach thought me ready to step into the ring. Half an hour later,...
“And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” – Book of Revelation 6:8 “Alert: traffic ahead. Estimated travel time has increased by 15 minutes.” Simon sighed and drummed his fingers on his steering wheel....
The days all started with the briefing room—a wall-to-wall palette of aged pastels and stark, hospital grayness. In the center of our little room, an oval-shaped table dominated the space with every seat filled with a tired nurse. From one of the windows, a bar of morning...
I moved to a new town about a year ago. I was offered a job and was at a point in my life where I felt restless and eager all at once. A new job in a new town was exactly what I had been...
Two days ago, I drove up to northern Vermont to do a little hiking. I needed to get away from it all: my job, social responsibilities, the world. I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone all weekend, so I picked a ten-mile trail...
I awake in the darkness, and where I might have otherwise thought myself blind, there is a thin shaft of light piercing the solid curtain of black around me. The light is reflected through a rounded patch of glass above my head, matched with the...
“What shall I love if not the enigma?” ―Giorgio de Chirico Part One The yellowed scrap might once have been printer paper, the cheap kind you pay five dollars for in some overly bright big-box palace of soulless depravity. I halted, stooped, and plucked it from the ground. Where...
I was the only one home when my father called me in for his deathbed confession. He wasn’t very old in the grand scheme of things, only fifty-eight, but after a violent mugging that took place about twenty years ago, his physical health hadn’t always been...
Tarmac turns to dirt, and the van bounces across uneven ground, causing my pen to roll off the passenger seat and the hanging cross to swing violently from side to side. There he is, walking straight towards me, about a hundred yards head, swaying his...
I should have taken more notice of the graffiti when I arrived at the Highbrooks. But the sad fact is that the strange scribblings on the complex were the least of my worries here. Traveling alone is never something I would recommend when you are in an...
I was 17 when I died. Okay, I’m lying. I was 46. But I was 17 at heart. I was living like I was 17. I was still at home with my mother, still living in my room that I had since I was born...
