Panic and chaos now struck the crowd and the stampede toward the arch began in earnest. Men trampling women. Women trampling children. Screams of terror and disbelief echoed through the market.
Tag: short story
Images & Words: Void the Light – Part 1
They lived in the Tangle, in the Eighth Circle, near the Barrier Wall … and they kept to themselves.
Images & Words: Fire of Fanaticism
“We’re going to lose her anyway,” I said, surveying Rose and the opposing player in their ballet of violence. She appeared out geared and outmatched, but Rose was usually more cunning than her opponents.
Images & Words: No Place Like Home
Equally disturbing was that there might be forty-one other balls hidden somewhere in the Solar System … perhaps more. It was not a comforting epiphany.
Images & Words: Means to an End
He grasped at the thin chain around his neck and pulled the miniature data shard from beneath his coat. A bright blue status light blinked back at him from a chip of what looked like irregular obsidian. The genesis of his revenge was intact. The reminder was no longer needed, eight years was enough.
Images & Words: From a Better Vanished Time
Every Sunday, for years, I’d fired up its rumbling and willing engine and journeyed to the countryside to visit my white-haired uncle. The VMX, a gift from him, was his dearest dream … a mechanical anachronism from a better vanished time.
Images & Words: A Dog’s Burden
Crab shows up and vanishes as he pleases. Yet he does so at the strangest of times, enigmatically appearing as if he knows that she needs him or wants to see him. Pets always seem to have a sixth sense in that regard.
Images & Words: In Machina Exspiravit
They approached the terminal warily, looking through the lattice at ground level to ensure they could see no one else in the vault. Hamlet secretly wished he could connect with Gravedigger via his bio.node, but there was no hope this deep under the ground…
Images & Words: Racadi’s Stand
What I’m standing on now is a black, jagged monolith thrusting from the barren volcanic plains of Arsensia III like a decayed tooth of the world, its lower portion cloaked in an atmosphere of choking sulfur dioxide, and its summit extending into the vacuum of space. Who in their right mind makes a journey of eighty-five light-years to climb a barren rock cloaked in a deadly atmosphere?
Images & Words: Building Pressure
14.7 ± 0.3 psi, surface, Terra standard, milspec, per contract. It was a lofty goal, but one that was drummed into us by the Triocracy on every terraforming colony. Never once have we actually hit that target, but we never stop trying…
Images & Words: Too Much in the Sun
They continued up the daunting stairs, their shadows becoming less ghostly as they neared the window. Even the atmospheric conditioners this high in the Spire could not keep up with the incessant dirt and dust that plagued this dreary planet…
Images & Words: The Light of Better Days
Lucian’s head rests on a cool white pillow. For a final time she reaches out a metallic hand and touches his cheeks as if in parting. But its touch is cold and lifeless. Discomforting.
