Love
Long After Night Has Fallen
Long after night has fallen, the girl watches the light of the moon swirl and sway its pearlescent waltz about the room, its movements snakelike and vaguely forlorn, its gradations of pale color thrown by fierce gusts of desert wind blowing with abandon through the thin gray walls. Some bleak white copy of an aurora borealis undulating on her dirt floor like something in its death throes. Where the light doesn’t fall, the shadows are deep and alive, their edges aflame with shimmering moonlight but the deepest corners black and untouchable as dreamless sleep. In the makeshift and broken roof above her head she can hear a flurry of wasps moving about in their furious and unceasing revolutions; they have built a nest somewhere up there, and she knows that they will persist long after she is gone. They have already persisted after so, so many. She thinks of dying, and of taking it into her own hands.
By Jacob Hyatt5 years ago in Fiction
Ballerina Bunker
Thick fog off the mountains had too much smoke, and even with my mask on, I began to hack up a lung. I started down a different path to the bunker. Change it up so I don’t leave a trail. I pulled and tugged at the submarine latch that led to our bunker home. My stomach felt like a knife was being plunged, and it gurgled.
By C.H. Schoen5 years ago in Fiction
The Walk
Major woke that morning as he had every morning, to the screams of the sick, dying and the injured. The sky above him scorched red, a reflection of the burning seas below them. This was the thirteenth camp he'd slept in since the day it rained fire. No one saw it coming, even with all the advances in technology, scientists watching the skies. The asteroid broke up once it hit Earth's atmosphere and scattered to every continent and hit the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, setting everything a blaze that the impact didn't kill. The last six months had been just as hard as the first six days after it happened. Everyone was cut off from each other, left to their own devices to survive. Countries around the world could barely support their own citizens let alone help anyone anywhere else. As time went on it became more than apparent that help would be little to none until it was just none and they all were on their own. One did whatever was necessary in order to live to see another day.
By Gail Alston5 years ago in Fiction
Not So Far as the Stars
In the morning their conversation turns to dreams. She says she dreams of his home, though she's never been. And of the green and red trees and the people who climb the trees to keep the cutters from coming. In truth, the cutters don’t check so much if there’s a climber in the trees these days, but it’s hours too early to turn the talk somber so he sends a sleepy smile:). Says maybe soon the air will thicken up enough to get the lockdown lifted and she can see the trees awake. It’s a crude veil for a clumsy invitation, but in the bleary semiconscious of solitude, subtlety evades. He hopes he's played the game by the rules. He hopes she sees the invitation, but only if she’s looking for it. He hopes she’s looking for it.
By Quinn Miller5 years ago in Fiction
Lost Paradise
Introductions - Cyber therapy session number 45.683.286.190. Model: E-Art. Neural decryption key... not applicable... Case status: high performance in environmental monitoring and interspecies communication, showing symptoms of obsessive-compulsive tendencies out of the scope of its programming. Diagnosis so far: rewiring necessary, find a new goal, build new habits in accordance with the Universal Standards of Teleonomic Cybernetics. Good morning E-Art xxxxxx and welcome. I’m Chabot LXN-dR and today I will be administering your session. -
By Edoardo Segato-Figueroa5 years ago in Fiction
Pulse
I waited as long as I could. I gathered what was left—the last rice balls, some tangy candy, those fishy chips you tried to get me to eat—along with clean underwear, a couple tees, a pair of socks. I took the hammer and a screwdriver from the closet, though I didn’t know what I’d do with them.
By Jam Michael McDonald5 years ago in Fiction
Amie's Diary
April 10, 2238 This is going to be my first entry. I just turned 18 today and received this notebook as a birthday gift. Not that I’m ungrateful, but the older you get around here, the lamer the gifts get. What am I supposed to do with this thing? Write about my super exciting life here in the bunker? Well I’ve got news for mom and dad. I already spoke to the head supervisor, and he said since I’m 18 now I’m old enough to leave if I really want to. And I’m leaving tomorrow.
By T. J. Ward5 years ago in Fiction
whatever souls are made of..
Settling comfortably on a large rock and gazing out at the empty, barren land before her, Jade hums a tune that has always brought her comfort. When Jade was younger -- before her mom had died -- and felt a loneliness that seemed too big for her small body, her mom would pet her hair and sing a soft song that came from the Before.
By Sarah Bloom5 years ago in Fiction
