“Mom said supper’s almost ready, but I think I’ve got time to scrub the toilets...”

 

“Already?”

 

She shrugged. “They’ve been used several times since this morning. And Craig has terrible aim.”

“This name origin stuff isn’t as helpful as I thought it might be. About half of the names seem to mean ‘good’ or ‘pretty’ and it’s one thing for parents to name their precious newborn something like that, but it would be arrogant for me to call myself ‘Agatha’ or ‘Jolie’ or whatever. Not that I like the sound of ‘Agatha’ anyway, but, you know.”

“The usual punishments don’t work,” Steve said. “No sense giving her extra chores when she’s already doing way more than her share, or grounding her when she doesn’t want to go anywhere and she’s quit playing games or watching TV on her own. I said we should stop her from cleaning something, but —”

“Seriously, the street gang of Techno-Mage wannabes? That Union? They were kindehackers, as I recall, more into the flash and fun than real running. How the hell could they be behind this and didn’t they vanish about ten years ago?

“They did vanish about ten years ago. The Union I knew couldn’t be behind this but the Union I knew is gone, replaced by street ghosts and phantom whispers of unstoppable Runners and assassins, wraiths in the system so deadly they scared the megacorps and world governments.”

“Come on, Mary. I saw some of those kids with their tophats and steampunk crap, Victorian-era costumes. There is no way they could be remotely involved in this. The kind of tech this body has? If the corps and govs can’t field this shit than how could a former street gang?”

“Understand that what I’m about to tell you is what I’ve heard from people I consider pretty reliable sources, people that have since gone tits up or vanished completely, you copy? Someone is covering their tracks hardcore.”

I looked at her. “If they’re that hardcore how come you’re still drawing breath?”

“Simple: I used to be one of them.”

Andrew McKenzie is a junior in highschool when a strange incident sweeps the world. In the aftermath Andrew is left confused and unsure what's happening to him as he slowly begins to notice changes. How we he and his family find the silver lining?

Andrew McKenzie is a junior in highschool when a strange incident sweeps the world. In the aftermath Andrew is left confused and unsure what's happening to him as he slowly begins to notice changes. How we he and his family find the silver lining?

“Jack, it’s Mindy. Tim has — gone through a Twist. You promised you’d come if — when — it happened...”

 

“I’ll be there.”

Andrew McKenzie is a junior in highschool when a strange incident sweeps the world. In the aftermath Andrew is left confused and unsure what's happening to him as he slowly begins to notice changes.

Andrew McKenzie is a junior in highschool when a strange incident sweeps the world. In the aftermath Andrew is left confused and unsure what's happening to him as he slowly begins to notice changes.

Way back in another life---before I was kidnapped by pirates and jumped overboard in the dead of night and almost drowned but got turned into a mermaid by a genie from a bottle---my friend Pepper used to say how I was lucky to not have any siblings. Every visit, texting or phone call had at least one epic tale about the latest fight with her sister or how the little brat would borrow Pepper's things without asking, and then lose them or just leave them laying somewhere half wrecked...

But I could never quite believe that having a sister like Ginger wasn't good at least as often as it was bad. After being an only child for all my life, being twins with a mermaid princess was.... WoNDeRfuL!!!!

Maybe if Anemone and I had grown up together it wouldn't seem so special, but I was too new to this life to take any part of it for granted. It was hard to feel like there was anything worth fighting about when just brushing my long soft golden hair put me on a total high, if I wasn't already on one from having woke up in my clam shell bed that morning to discover: “Yep, still a princess!”

Anemone had been an only child until now too, and she was loving us being sisters as much as I was. We went everywhere and did everything together, and all the ocean's dolphins and whales and sea turtles, the fish, the stars, the shrimps and lobsters (but not so much the crabs...) and even the unbelievably stupid sponges were our friends.

71 year old John Dodge, retired military, now sits in a nursing home, his body riddled with cancer, waiting on the grim reaper to come for him when he is given another option.

“Good. You're awake,” said a girl's voice.

“Huh? Whah?” I burbled groggily at the pretty fish-girl I saw hovering in front of me. She looked about sixteen and was about the cutest girl I'd ever seen. Definitely the cutest mermaid.

I was in a beach chair in the seashell castle's courtyard. My legs felt weird and fat and there was something sitting on my chest. She said, “Please don't panic, but in order to save your life we had to-”

Of course when she said don't panic like that it's exactly what I did do, but only for a second. I looked down and saw what was on my chest. It was my chest. Beneath these two rather impressive breasts my waist narrowed and then flared out into girlish hips that were covered in beautiful jade green scales, which continued down the long sleek shiny tail I now had for legs. I wagged it back + forth experimentally. And this stuff floating around my face wasn't some kind of seaweed but my hair, super long and shimmering like gold.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God,” was all I could say. “Oh my God! My God! My God!”

This summer vacation was turning out to be the strangest week of my life. Or maybe of anyone's...

71 year old John Dodge, retired military, now sits in a nursing home, his body riddled with cancer, waiting on the grim reaper to come for him when he is given another option.

Where does one person end and another begin? Usually not a difficult question to answer as each mind is confined to the brain it inhabits, but as our ingenuity enables us to overcome the barriers nature would impose on us, so we discover there are unforeseen consequences.

Nietzsche famously said that when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. I'm not sure this is what he meant by it, but it fits. Physics predicts that you can't observe something without changing it, and as you exert an influence on it, so it responds by exerting one on you.

Not in any way a Valentines story, but it's finished, so it might as well go up.

Sparrow sat at a table in the cafeteria reading the girl’s diary. She was quite the information gatherer. If the diary was anything to be believed, Kiranim grew up in another world. Homeless but still finding a purpose in life. This thing call Free Running. Which, up till now, kept her safe and out of trouble. This Jeril seemed to have a positive effect on her. The more she read, the more engrossed in the girl she became. Until the point she didn’t notice Hawk behind her.
“You’re really into that diary.” Hawk announced his presence, causing sparrow to jump. “Sorry.”

Here is another older story I thought I'd knock the dust off of.

******

"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of the imagination. Next stop: THE TWILIGHT ZONE."
- Rod Serling

Chris Blake had one wish, to appear on stage in front of a large crowd and experience the thrill of their applause and adoration. Chris is about to find out what happens, when you open the door to... THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

He wanted stardom, and headed west with Hollywood as his destination. Hoping all of time and money spent on singing, piano and acting lessons would surely pay off. Confidant of his abilities, he decided that the time was right for the move.

Motoring along a dusty back-road, Chris happened to glance down into a small tree lined valley and spied what looked like an old town. His curiosity being what it was, he began to look for a way down into the well hidden little town.

Game Time

A Tale Of The Star Wars

by

E. E. Nalley

It had been heralded as the latest thing.

Normally I'm not what you call an early adapter. I'd rather wait till the bugs are out of something before I start putting my eggs in that particular basket. Yes I did swear I'd never leave Windows For Workgroups, why should I? It was a great OS! Still XP seemed to finally have ironed out all the 'hidden features' of Windows 9X and just as things are starting to get good and stable I get Vista-ed.

“Please know that only the worst offenders were reaped,” Petra informed the audience. “Many who supported the blasphemers are still alive. God feels they were tricked, misled and coerced into following those who were reaped. It is God’s sincere hope they repent. If they do not, all peoples should ostracize them and report them to the governments. EVERY government must be prepared to utterly destroy anyone who resorts to terrorism.”

Josephus Carter is dying of cancer. Believing there is no grace in death, he abandons his family and friends to sail into the Pacific and die alone. Josephus soon finds himself in a strange yet familiar world. A world with gods, where a Goddess of fate and a God of Labor have called Josephus to take his place as their child a Goddess of the Arts.