Fiction
Using It and Losing It
Pratt walked the distance to work, stopped in at his accustomed cigar store to buy cigarettes, and rode the elevator upstairs to his office; in short, his standard routine, without deviation—yet it didn’t feel right.
Pratt walked the distance to work, stopped in at his accustomed cigar store to buy cigarettes, and rode the elevator upstairs to his office; in short, his standard routine, without deviation—yet it didn’t feel right.
Harlan Ellison®
23:35
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She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen’s throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore.
Stefan Rudnicki
43:11
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John came to the crossroads at just shy of noon, where a man dressed all in black stared up at another man hanging from a gallows-tree. No, not hanging; he was being hung.
Stefan Rudnicki
19:12
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by Cory Skerry
One day it was, “Why haven’t you any hair, Mother?” She stroked her own golden locks, which now swept her ankles, as she waited for an answer.
Gabrielle De Cuir
37:21
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It was snowing when the wolves first came, loping down Flatbush Ave., lithe and fast, panting clouds, their paws landing with a soft, heavy sound like bombs falling somewhere far away.
Gabrielle de Cuir
32:08
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by M. Rickert
Graveyards creak with too many bones, and the weight of headstones, and when the wind blows the air is dusty with the dead. Ah life, its hoary inevitability. What’s the point?
Stefan Rudnicki
28:19
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You know all about bending and breaking their terms of service; it would take some serious hacking, magical or mundane, to pull this off. But you suspect magic.
Paul Boehmer
49:40
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by Cat Rambo
Decades later the music was what really tipped Glen off. He heard a song on the radio, a brand new release, and remembered the day he’d first heard it, twenty years earlier.
Stefan Rudnicki
41:05
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I got my sword out of the trunk. Its name was Stella Mortua. John Ray hadn’t had a clue, but Francis told me what it meant: The Dead Star.
Emily Janice Card
51:17
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by Jeffrey Ford
I learned about creation from Mrs. Grimm, in the basement of her house down the street from ours. The room was dimly lit by a stained-glass lamp positioned above the pool table. There was also a bar in the corner.
Rajan Khanna (via StarShipSofa)
26:42
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