High in the bluffs, with its tower and its wicker-woven hut, we watched the long north road. We saw her as she came, head held high and her beating heart [...]
Fiction
Wish You Were Here
A scribble of lightning cracks from the roof of the house to the weedy lawn. I bend down, light up a cigarette on the flaming patch, and stomp out the [...]
Ptomaine
I.
Miss Covington is dead before Frederick finds me.
Despite the damages, she is still attractive. A swathe of unbound hair curls across the snow. Her cheeks aren’t so round and fleshy [...]
The Battle for Moscow, Idaho
My severed fingers lay in the snow of the parking lot, flakes melting on their tips. Shoes squeaked in the snow. I had been shot somewhere in the chest with [...]
The Weatherwoman
They came for him in the stillness of shadow and artificial moonlight. It could not even be called midnight: there were no nights in the Citadel but those requested by [...]
A Little Bit Like the Tooth Fairy (Only Not Quite)
There are three hares in my bedroom when I wake up on Wednesday. Long-legged and soft-furred, they hop about agitatedly. One of them has made a nest out of yesterday’s [...]
Touched
I woke to the sound of frightened children. The wind swung in through the broken windows of the wrecked bus and curled around us, stealing in under our clothes. It [...]
Der Führer’s Bunker
The Soviet artillery is a steady heartbeat above our heads now. Reminds me of a child stomping about the house inside his daddy’s oversized boots, moving from room to room. Footsteps instead of detonations. I rather like the image. So do a few others in here with me. It lessens the fear. And down in our hole, there’s a lot to fear these days…
The Abilene Abduction
Before a microphone: “Sir, so you say you were abducted by aliens?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” says Harold Golt in Tony Lama boots, his daddy’s boots: resoled, real rattlesnake skin.
“Tell us about it.”
“On [...]
Viy
An ogre’s worth five minutes. Demons are ten. Double that if you’re working with two people; triple it for three. Multiply it by six if you want a horde. Increase [...]
Pullen & Bumber’s Catalogue of Particulars
As we at Pullen & Bumber are familiar with your particular proclivities, we hope to interest you in a series of items that have just come into our possession. They were delivered to the auction house mere days ago, and I assure you that no other customers yet know…
Poor Charlie Marks
“Piss off, Gillespie. I mean it.” Captain MacManus clutched the banister of the third floor landing, kicking the apartment door closed behind him. He swallowed hard as the faded, grime-crusted walls of the ancient tenement swayed before him. He took a deep breath, grimacing as…
Shootout at the Windmills
I had been with Michael four years, close to five, and I thought that he was a good man. He had done a lot of bad things, but I thought [...]
The Boy Band
You have to understand: I’m putty in the hands of sad Asian men. Ever since I saw Jet Li’s wife get killed in “The One,” I’ve been the world’s biggest [...]
Changes
Do you know what they said to me one time when I was waiting for you? One of the doctors said, “Think of a balloon with many dots drawn on [...]