A sour lemon sky presided over the town where only lorry drivers and gangsters could afford petrol. Half of the streets were bathed in terminal twilight. Leon said he had business on the dark side and promised he wouldn’t be long. Lara waited between two worlds near the glassy storefront that mirrored all. An hour…
Category: fiction
#FF — Still we dance
Neither machines nor prophecies warned us. It’s been two centuries since Earth suffered a decade of pelting by radioactive rubble from an exploded sun. During the first months, humans dug underground habitations – and that’s where we’ve stayed. Most surface life that wasn’t allowed in or able to survive died out. The rest adapted like…
#FFFC 80 — life alone is not enough
When the people on the TV in a land far away started dying we were detached. When death knocked on our doors in the public places there was denial. When we brought it home to our loved ones, who sickened and died, we began to believe. As the killer morphed, evading our now-concerted efforts to…
TSS #7 — Released
His skin, so smooth and warm, his muscles testament to sweat equity and discipline, his smile bright as nuclear fusion, his demeanor solicitous and addictive. Three years she had been spellbound, three years she had suffered within the confines of tortured passion with a man whose soul was as empty as the vacuum of space….
#FF — On the fence
Trees surrounded the house like a cage. Tangi asked the realtor, “Why has this house been on the market so long? The price is more than right.” Inhaling visibly, the realtor answered, “Mechanically it’s sound, and there are no liens.” “That’s not what I asked.” “Once an offer is made, I’m able to disclose specifics,”…
What do you see # 42 — The Muse
She’d been held hostage in the rustic cottage for weeks. The daughter of a wealthy international businessman, the kidnapping had happened when the family was on vacation in South America. Her captors were brusque but they treated her with care as she was worth a lot of money to them. Every day she made a…
#FF — lullaby
Tourists returned to the village of Hualong, after enduring five years of rigidly enforced international travel restrictions. Three years prior, laissez faire attitudes and practices had killed or disabled twenty million worldwide. The vaccine was developed from a tropical fungus that could be easily mass-produced. Mae could hear them in her upper apartment over the…
Tao-Talk 