The cursor blinked over the empty gray code editor. Heated sentences from earlier restarted with each click of the cat clock’s tail. I parsed the sentences, evaluated the sentiments of words and phrases, and analyzed the points. Two in the morning. Eyes in the screen glared back. The false starts
“Step one is to load.” a tap on the shoulder tap water running brown sex is more important than food giggling in the creek naked shoes off creaking wood floor wet with sweaty longing cat scattering mewling one two three “Now you’re ready to aim.” yeah I’m a man’s man
William didn’t expect much from the computer in his pocket. He had been part of a neural network AI research project for some time and while they had improved them considerably when dealing with a problem had a limited set of results it was hard to imagine any value in
Ashes swirled above the peaks, and pushed by winds older than time, poured over the cliffs of Arizona’s Mogollon Rim and Mount Baldy. Tempests gathered at the feet of both mountains. Commanded by flurries, two thunderstorms formed, intensified, and unfolded southward, shrouding the lowland skies in cloaks of iron-colored vapor.
The witches three, long-sighted, short, astigmatic, give the prophecy you must fulfill, or not. Look at the trifocal injury your father gave, as you sharpen your own stake. Look at me running from the drink that drowned his brother, and from self-control. Foretold wars do not kill the lame; do
There’s no tree that can’t catch on fire, especially when we’re talking about using aerosol cans and firewood to ignite dry branches. We actually did that at summer camp – fifty 16-year-olds unsupervised! Can you imagine? We actually did that! Caught trees on fire! In a California drought! Can you
On fragile mattresses, a third of the world’s skulls hallucinate. Eyes, isotopic pools where hours sink to multiply years. Curious leeches watch us erupt in suspended dawn, the sun deep-fried in saturated fog. Waxing oscine beaks flutter across pale curtains wailing to recover extinct bird- song. As
i would liken her to a swan the way she dips her neck low towards me hisses territorially in the same instant i’m both glowed awestruck at her appearance in my mirror i would liken her to swan i say “liken” because that’s not really her is it? she’s fragile
A little after midnight, my head lifts off the pillow to the sound of static. A screen crackles. A siren issues a warning. Something is breaking, like an insect cracking through amber and crawling up through the millennia. This is a test of your consciousness. At dawn, I awaken to
Slipshod tread, plop – into a ready-made grave. Bethany’s tracks were followed into the thicket, cynosure at its finest. It takes a perfect creep to pull off this kind of abduction. Larvae and forest swathe her from head to toe, wrists and ankles broken – necrosis, vulned
