Invitation Despite the bathroom being fully enclosed with no natural light, Elle knew the sun had gone out because Jamison told her and she listened to him, he had form. One Christmas when she was six, he whispered that Santa … Continue reading Invitation
Fliss compressed her short, squat, frame further into the burned out hollow of the hull, shoving Hennessey’s evacuated carcass aside and flicking indeterminate debris casually off her weapons harness. She holed up to consider strategy. Fliss was a soldier; a grunt on the peri-solar defence ring where killing aliens, not caring platitudes, got you through a shift. She looked down at her uniform, or what passed for one after this morning’s skirmish, and scraped off the residue it had collected from the blast that took out her unit’s communications array. Most of her squad had gone with it and some … Continue reading Promotion
We thought they’d never get this far; that they’d self-destruct or get bored. Or just take long weekends to go shopping in Wal-Mart or Ikea and leave the ‘where do we come from’ pile of shit alone. I mean, we gave them enough scripts, and plays, and performances, and fables to keep them occupied. Or so we thought. The heretics, smug bastards, have been banging on forever about how, all the time we were busy putting together some flat-out awesome scene, like the aurora borealis for instance, they were niggling away at the cosmic onion and peeling bits of it … Continue reading A very particular view
Something odd was happening. The air had been tingling for days; fizzing when he wafted his hand across his face, and just lately leaving a faint after-glow in its trail. He’d taken to drawing out equations in the air to see how long the effect persisted, and if he could get a whole one up there before the first terms disappeared. ‘What’s with all the semaphore, Jeff?’ his pal Don asked from under a cocked eyebrow. He leaned in the doorway and watched as Jeff flailed his arms, like he was landing a jumbo jet in his kitchen. ‘Nothing,’ Jeff … Continue reading Copied Right
Nick’s body convulsed in a cough that scorched his lungs and expelled a glob of bright, wet material onto the sweaty sheet he held under his chin. He tracked its progress. The group of people clustered in the doorway tracked it too and took an involuntary step backwards. ‘Shouldn’t we have special suits?’ one of them said. ‘It’s only blood and spit,’ someone else remarked, although his laugh was a little strained. Shannon thought about it; the man looked red and hot but he was shivering. ‘Franklin, are you getting this?’ She angled her head-cam towards Nick and described his … Continue reading Incubators
Jody ran into the house, all pink and breathless, ‘There’s a thing in our garden!’ he announced, coughing slightly on ‘garden’ and having to inhale half way through. ‘Oh, really?’ his mother said, not looking up from the hoover that had just died. Jody recognised this as an adult’s empty communication, although he called it being ignored. ‘A thing, a metallic thing with gadgety arms, flashy lights, and a lid thingy that’s like, going whaawha whoomph!’ ‘Whawha woomph …’ Jody’s mother had begun eviscerating the hoover, so the chances of getting her attention had just dropped below zero. Jody ducked into the … Continue reading Precision
“Slick as oil over water, Katia headed for the house of the man whose dreams she needed to reprogramme. She shifted through his bedroom wall like damp through old bricks to wait by his cot for the right moment. Then, as his eyes began to flick back and forth and his long limbs twitched, she bent close to his ear, reintroducing the precious seed stolen by the Reversionists to demolish the future.” In ZeroFlash in response to prompt including, um, zeros! Continue reading ‘Ør1g1ns’
‘Something odd was happening. The air had been tingling for days; fizzing when he wafted his hand across his face.’ On Readwave now. Continue reading ‘Copied Right’
Dr Suzanne Conboy-Hill 