Needs of the Few

Barry angled the mirror around. Satisfied no-one lurked near the door, he slipped into the supermarket. His gut roiled at the stench. They always said, don’t go shopping on an empty stomach; who knew piles of corpses would be even more effective. Mirror preceding him, he crept toward the tinned aisle. A woman in a …

Be Mindful of the Present

I’ll die at 8:23 am next Tuesday. Rather precise but true nevertheless. Teenage dreams had given way to boring adulthood. Then I saw this advert “Scared to live? We offer seven days without worry about possible futures.” It was free and I literally had nothing interesting that evening, so I went. Woke up with this …

Death of a Drone

Karl connected the repeater and stepped back. Fifteen seconds later, the window exploded. His breathing spiked as tiny drones swarmed through the hole. Pushing down images of neat holes in foreheads, he sent a message to all his contacts calling the President ugly. The swarm drifted randomly as his contacts responded. He was right: no …

Beating the Pain

The steel felt good beneath his hands, each blow echoing like a confirmation of existence. Knowledge had built the world around him, and given him the tools to understand what he felt and why. But knowledge wasn’t a tap in the barrel of his chest to drain away the adrenaline poisoning his taste and spasming …

Twelve Hours to Midnight

Andrea glanced at the email. The Doomsday Clock had gone back yet another hour. Barely news. Maybe before the weather. How did it go...? DC station recorded street interviews on Christmas wishes. Cue cute Asian girl saying all she wanted was her daddy not to get ‘sploded. Sheer coincidence the next show was a documentary …

Impersonating Oneself

Aurelius strode gracefully. Halloween was the perfect time of the year; men almost stood out more if they didn’t wear make-up or ape horrors. A time to hunt without the fear his appearance might reveal him. And even a few days after costume parties let him hide in sight. Tonight it ended though. Tomorrow the …

Eternity in a Plain of Sand

Samhain, All Hallows Eve, Halloween. Names change, but the image of the dead dancing endured. And we did. Not a macabre dance but dance nevertheless. Because the gates opened for those who’d fulfilled their final task, accepted loved ones would survive without them, realised they deserved release. But the key was always the living. We …

Seeing All the Angles

For years, I’ve fallen asleep to the evolution of dimensions: a dot, then a line, then a square, then a cube, then a tesseract. Not necessarily the last thoughts before sleep but a constant marker of the liminal space between duvet and dream. And at some point, I realised not only are there several three-dimensional …

Circling the Square

Jace picked the office door lock. It’d seemed a simple idea: identify everyone attending meetings, then run stats to prove Masonry wasn’t the path to power. He’d felt vindicated when the numbers showed on average Masons were slightly more successful. Until he noticed the distribution was off. Which was the start of the rabbit hole. …

One Nation Under The Law

John cowered behind the remains of his cousin’s pick-up as the shooting range burnt. How’d it all gone to shit so fast? Everything’d seemed on the right track. He’d thought nothing would top seeing Reverend Newton, a real Christian, being sworn in as President. Until the angels came. Perfect beings descending to affirm the Constitution. …