Here on Here
Space was browner than usual, browner than it should be, which is not at all. It was a waste of space, this waste-filled space. Funny, considering just how much there…[...]
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All or Nothing
So it is, hours before dusk, hours before the most prominent battle any soldier gathered here tonight will ever see, I sit here trying to find inspirational words for what,…[...]
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Chocolate and Nietzsche at the end of the world
The following is the re-telling of history as only the witnesses can tell it. Humans became putrid in these lands and died in droves. Doctors failed to diagnose the peculiar…[...]
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Therapy For the End of The World
John noticed a slight change in her voice tonight. Over the countless hours of sessions they have had over the years, Clara’s tone had become warmer. There was a clinical…[...]
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Samantha Strolls in Silver Fields
A demigod of rock thrust his guitar pick down in one final stroke, and the Stratocaster screamed under the arena’s flashing strobes, a thunderous roll of drums finishing behind him.…[...]
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A Sky Full of Stars
(This story contains suicide and strong language) I don’t remember how to look at the stars anymore. Looking at the stars may not be something you learn how to do,…[...]
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The Darkest Point of Night
Every bit of starlight we see is ancient. The night sky is a tapestry of twinkling relics flung across millions of lightyears, eons from when they first burned. Even after…[...]
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The Last Note of Blue
The world had been monochrome for so long that most people had stopped trying to remember what color felt like. But Mara remembered all too well. Some mornings, when the…[...]
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Where Butter Was
Carol had been tasting yellow since she was four years old. Cold butter — specifically the kind left out overnight — soft enough to spread but still carrying the chill…[...]
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A Gray Interlude
After the bombs fell, the world turned gray. Not just in the distance, although you could only see an arm’s length ahead of you. But when you looked at the…[...]
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The Amber Room
Her daughter had never seen color. She had never been taught what amber was. So someone needed to explain to Nessa Galloway why every crayon in Isla's box was worn…[...]
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The Forty-Fourth
Stars I am dying beneath a sky that does not care. The stars above Verantis are unfamiliar. Cold. Indifferent. They have seen countless deaths and will see countless more. Mine…[...]
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Eye Hunger
The pledge took forty‑five seconds. Elias had timed it. He knew this because timing the pledge was the only thought he was permitted to have during it—his mouth moved through…[...]
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The Necessity of Blood
You must not bleed. You learn this first of all. Before love, before knowledge, before faith. You must not bleed. To bruise is unideal but sometimes a blow must be…[...]
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Paper Wings
Ren commands the paper into intricate folds. The amber sunlight streaking through the window by his desk illuminates the softness of his dark eyes. Serious. Meticulous. Inspired. His collection of…[...]
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The Color of Nothing
Shirley Harbrecht hissed into the receiver. “Richard! What about the car insurance?”She needn’t have worried about Jeffrey overhearing her, because her young son was lost in the project that lay…[...]
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The Meaning of Grey
The curtains that hung from the ceilings were a simple grey. Not the silver that sometimes comes from the moon’s light at the right angle. Nor was it the dark…[...]
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Black Market Hands
Black Market Hands By: Michael K Norris Officer Wells rapped his knuckles on the garage’s side door as a robot walked by on the nearby sidewalk - holding a dog…[...]
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Red Shifted
Ezekiel Crowe once drew maps for the living. His clean lines guided lost souls through the untamed wilderness, steering them clear of swamps and bogs and onto solid ground. For…[...]
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The Witness
The sky hums in soft colors, in streaks of pink and orange painted across the blue canvas. The sun hanging off the edge of the world threatens to disappear and…[...]
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Smoke and Signals
Experiment complete. Status: Failure.“Wynn. Good morning, Wynn.” A bird three shades darker than that of the light grey sky chirped from a thin branch outside a domed glass window that…[...]
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Her Pale Blue Lips
She’s been underwater for far too long. It’s been at least five minutes since I noticed she was missing and another five minutes for me to ease my way out…[...]
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There Used to be More of Us
It was after sunset when Martín Rojas caught up to him and dropped his saddle on the ground next to the fire. Enrique had ridden ahead and waited for him,…[...]
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I found my color
She almost turned back. Standing at the trailhead, staring at the path winding uphill, she felt the familiar dread settling in. She looked at her car. Then at this new…[...]
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What the Trees Were Called
The darkness was complete apart from the glow of the fire. Kip looked around, and could see nothing a few feet out from the flames. The darkness was like a…[...]
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The Daughter of Early Dew Drops
My favorite part about visiting my mother is leaving her.It's the dew on the grass, the fresh wind of an early spring day just an hour before the crack of…[...]
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A Glimpse of Green
A Glimpse of Green Over a hundred years ago, the trees in the Onby forest began to grow back grey. ‘Cut a tree, plant a tree,’ it was said in…[...]
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In Rainbows
“Another late night, D?” The sun had set some hours ago, but I found myself still hunched over my desk. Truth be told, I hadn’t noticed the time, but a…[...]
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About to Fall
A thick fog envelops Hyde Park as I ride my ginger pony around the deserted kiosk at Speakers’ Corner. Winter Wonderland closed last week, leaving its muddy footprint stamped on…[...]
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The Orange Dust Storm
I don’t mean to sound melodramatic. But if you’re reading this, then good luck. I didn’t get out alive. Which means either someone found my notebook and brought it back.…[...]
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The Black Romance
The storm of war cries, fireballs whizzing just overhead, the taste of blood in your mouth—none of it was new to Sir Calon. War had been his trade since youth.…[...]
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The Gods who sleep at the Seams
The Gods Who Listen at the Seams Analise kept a whiteboard in her apartment that she'd filled and erased so many times the surface had gone permanently grey.Her cacti were…[...]
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They Used to be Green
Last night, they were green. It took several minutes before I noticed, as generally I keep the bathroom light off first thing in the morning. It was a habit I…[...]
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The Chromatic Curse
I have to eat colors to stay alive. Go ahead. Laugh. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. I had to figure out how to eat color. Just color.…[...]
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A Very Red Vase
The upside to catching a lasgun beam in the stomach rather than a lead bullet, Sinclair thought, is there is no bullet you have to dig for before stitching yourself…[...]
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Resolution Revolution
Trigger Warnings: - disturbing imagery- societal manipulation- militant themes Jade Zelenska was a snapshot of whimsey in an urban jungle. From the space-buns wrangled by mismatched, neon scrunchies to the…[...]
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The World Isn’t Yellow
Quill was twelve and a half and lived with a hundred other one to eighteen-year-olds in a bunker under an ancient suburban neighborhood.The only information she and the others had…[...]
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The Grayscale Syndrome
CW: Mass death, suicide, apocalyptic themes The Grayscale Syndrome “This is the Friday night edition of the Critical Mass podcast with Ava Winslow. I would ask how everyone is doing,…[...]
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The Shape of Knowing
The Shape of KnowingThe lights went out on a Wednesday in October, which was an inconvenient day for the end of the world. Don Anderson was in the shop behind…[...]
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The Quiet Divide
"Rainy Days Ahead," announced the text box at the bottom of Dr. Riley's display. "3 inches of rain expected this Friday." For a moment, he imagined himself as one of…[...]
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It Ain’t Easy Being Orange
I used to be bolder than others. Even the boldest of the bold could not eclipse my brilliance.I don’t mean I was unapproachable; I was and am as sweet as…[...]
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UNICORN RE-WILDING
No re-wilding programme has caught the British public’s imagination more than the recent plan to re-introduce unicorns into Scotland. People of our generation have long forgotten that the unicorn used…[...]
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Roots of the Withered Land
My hand feels stiff, as if bark has grown over my skin. I stare across the bar and wonder: Is ignorance really bliss? I don’t have an answer. Luckily, it’s…[...]
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I The Chimera, T The Tachyon, and We The Web
My kin told me a long time ago in my youth, “The earth remembers what” others “forget.” “Others? Of whom do you speak?” I asked ”You’ll see” said affirmatively my…[...]
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Jave Islands
The sun is hot on my skin. I have so much to do and so many places to be but I'm not in a hurry. I've had a song stuck…[...]
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What Survives Being Measured
The ground had forgotten how to give anything back. It held its shape when she pressed her heel down.The town called it a drought, like naming it made it simple.…[...]
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The Earth Remembers
Ruth stood at the shoreline and took deep breaths. She had been in charge of the island for years, but sometimes, standing here, staring into the openness of the water,…[...]
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Blue Mouths
The hand came first.I had held it so long I had forgotten it was not mine — five fingers, dark and perfect, the nails still curved like little shells. I…[...]
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The Small Ones First
I found them by their heat.From altitude, the planet read mostly in blues and greens, the thermal signature of a world still within habitable range but trending wrong. Pockets of…[...]
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The Earth Remembers
Sankee walked among the headstones in the old cemetery. There, she was afforded windows of introspection. It was a quiet world, over ten miles away from the nearest town of…[...]
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Dug the Demon Poet
This is the guy I’m supposed to possess, I confirm as I look at my fact sheet. Dwayne Gary, age 33, single, waiter at Chili’s. He sounds incredibly boring. One…[...]
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A Trace Of Green
A Trace Of Green With a coffee as bitter as his thoughts, Mike barely heard the waves lashing against the walls of his lighthouse home. For ten years, he had…[...]
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One Hundred and Twenty-Two Suns
We wait for you, our special one, as we always do. We’ve come to expect you, and we are afraid that you are long overdue. Please come home, our special…[...]
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The Opening
The OpeningIAccording to something he had once heard—perhaps as a child, perhaps later, perhaps not even from a person—the earth remembers what we forget, though the sentence had never settled…[...]
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The Pulse Beneath the Moss
Vera had been cataloging the death of things for eleven years. She never used that word in her reports. She wrote things like photosynthetic decline, premature senescence, biosphere instability, or…[...]
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The Water Takes Us
“If you go into the water, it will take your life. We are cursed to never enter the ocean.” My mother’s words echoed in my mind as I recalled a…[...]
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The Coquimbo Node
The ceiling fan spun slow, like lazy vultures circling through the smoky neon haze of the bar. The air was thick—too thick—humid in a way that didn’t belong this close…[...]
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The Last Midwife
The Last Midwife Her name was Evelyn Marrow. In the dim, sterile glow of the Evergreen Care Facility’s common room, she sat alone with her memories and the faint, ever-present…[...]
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To Subatomic Particles You Shall Return
Alpha Memento Mori was a special universe. Like every universe, stars moved out of their neighborhood seeking new beginnings. But they strayed too far and consumed all their resources in…[...]
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The Soul of a Tree
I ached. My branches creaked like the old bones of a buck. Had many come and go. Some never return. A loss of the tiniest bird makes my heartwood ache…[...]
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The Man and The Lighthouse
The Man & The Lighthousemadeleine rosevear At last, I was alone before the sea.CRASH, she bellows. KSHH, she wails and retreats. Beautifully expectable and enticing. Timid yet unapologetic. A shame,…[...]
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Beneath the Oak
Padraig stared at the grove from the other side of the fence. Green like that made his stomach ache. The white drone beeped and hovered above the ground beneath the…[...]
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Your Country Needs You
Your Country Needs You I’m lucky to be alive. And terrified of myself – for doing something I never thought possible. A man, or what was once a man, stands…[...]
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All You Can Eat
We approach at sunrise: five men packed into a crew-cab truck, descending on the last five-acre parcel deemed “problematic” because of its rumored curse. Armed with cables and winches, first…[...]
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The Seventh Sense
The Seventh Sense The screams were horrible. She had never even been able to watch crime shows on TV that depicted people hurting others. It was a type of horror,…[...]
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The Pebble Who Was Once A Mountain
To your eyes I am still and yet I have moved thousands of miles.Slowly. Slowly.I am but a piece of who I was; chiseled by gravity, by motion, by time…[...]
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The Brother Who Let Go
First, I have to tell you I am alive and I have two brothers. One Near-And-Beating Brother, who holds my hand beneath the damp, green and life-bearing soil. Whose hurts…[...]
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The Final Landscape
I am eighty-seven years old, and I have lived a very simple but happy life. My wife, Ava, passed away fifteen years ago, and as we had no children, now…[...]
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The Saddler
“What are you working on Faf?” Riley asked his grandfather as he sat on the far end of the workbench to watch him work. He called his grandfather Faf because…[...]
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Manos de Mujer
The first group of children are already huddled by the exhibit entrance at the far end of the hall. A young guide in her sleek black dress is gently pressing…[...]
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How to rebuild the future
The Earth remembers what we forget. The husks of humanity’s past glory, laid out all around for us to admire… And yet, we lack the ability to restore them, to…[...]
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The Last Storyteller
“Let me tell you a story.”The man looks up at me, tearing his gaze away from his phone as I slide into the seat across the table from him. “Huh?”…[...]
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The Quiet Afghan
It had been eleven years since Afshin had journeyed out of Mazar-i-Sharif, through the stony deserts and forbidding mountains of the Hindu Kush, to meet the friend who put people…[...]
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The Market and the Misanthrope
Jack is alone in his studio apartment, on his phone, watching the odds creep low and lower.“Don’t overthink it,” he tells himself. “And don’t get greedy.” He understands that the…[...]
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The edge of the world
Vincent made a sharp turn, causing the car to sway along the rocky road.“You could at least slow down,” Amaia complained. “This road is full of bends.”Vincent grunted.“You wanted to…[...]
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The Final Cut
Type Note: This story contains themes of alcohol abuse and emotional distressFirst Drink After the math exam, I went back to my room – a messy student den I never…[...]
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I Do This to Remember
When people ask me how or why I chose to get into this line of work, I tell them the story of my grandfather’s funeral. Which, I know, is never…[...]
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At the Dawn of the Second Age
Evie was only six years old the first time she met a unicorn. It was not, as she had thought, a horse with a horn on its head. Rather, it…[...]
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This Water Lives in Muña
Father Time watched the death of Mother Earth and in his sorrow became a drunkard that knew not whether to regress or progress, so in his confusion he mashed it…[...]
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The Snake That Killed Eurydice
The widows’ pity gnaws at me. Their puffed lower lips, the downturned corners of their red eyes. I take a crooked pleasure in it, a masochist for their biting glances.…[...]
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Echoes Beneath The Ruins
Little Riri stumbled and fell. Quickly standing up, she ran the last few steps towards me. She clung to my legs for dear life, her lips quivering in fear. I…[...]
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Liquid Gold
“Many years ago stood a village. From it lived a man, a fella from them rocks named Finley. Finley grew up real poor. His clothes were nothing but rags. His…[...]
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The Smallest Expert
The Smallest Expert The future of indoor plants was saved on a random Thursday morning by a seven-year-old girl with a bottle of beer. At the time, the little girl…[...]
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The Memory Thief
Fudalik was hopeful. Perched on the corner of a tall structure, he had found the perfect vantage. His entire form shifted like wind on the surface of water. Gentle and…[...]
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“Keeper of the Roots”
“Keeper of the Roots”Ms. Kwan PerkinsWord Count: 1909 Élise Noire was born at twilight when the Mississippi River rose higher than it had in years, swollen with light from the…[...]
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