I watched you burn.

I watched as your multi-hued plumage singed and reduced to grey, dead ash.

I watched powerlessly as your skin, flesh and bone blistered, seared and charred. Before long, a pile of soot and slag was all that remained where you had bee…

Three of us rode north in my 2002 Camry. Sometimes it felt too small, but having recently been in a Volvo from the eighties, I was forced to concede that cars had gotten a lot roomier since the time of ALF. Wil and David (never Dave) didn't feel the same …

The inside of the tent was dark and cold and claustrophobic. Bree rolled over in her blanket, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders. Dan, her mom's new boyfriend, whispered something on the other side of the tent causing her mom to giggle. Bree rolled …

Story is marked as mature

The room, if you can call it that, for it was enormous, easily the largest single chamber I'd seen down here in the dark, was a nightmare landscape of chaos. I had to shake my head and blink my eyes several times to try to rid myself of the vertigo it i…

I wonder if I'm unwanted. Am I the problem? I've always tried to make things better but I feel like I'm trying to keep the heart beating on a dying Clydesdale. Substitute any other majestic animal you want. For me the Clydesdale carries mass and dignity i…

Streaking down from the heavens, long tailed comets signaled the end of everything. Tears of blazing light marring the inscrutable face of the sky. Were we ready? It was stupid of me to think about such things now, when it was too late to matter, but I co…

Mitaran nudged the trajectory of the chestnuts with a whispered charm and caught it with one outstretched hand. Always so casual, Katy thought, taking a sip of water to hide her expression.

"Hey, uh, Mitt."

"Mhmm?"

"What are you going to do next year? …

Newkirk and Beckton appeared in a cascading flash and swirl of short-lived white particles as if teleporting in from an immaterial snowstorm. They were surrounded by a thick fog that stirred in a somewhat turgid manner, as if just a touch heavier than the…

A man placed his hand on the woman's shoulder and asked, “Where is Mhum-Ma?”

The leader of the left replied, “She has returned to the earth and we all bear her sorrow.” People on both sides reacted with surprise before dropping their heads in reverence. …

The two sides met, one coming from stone huts and arbitrary rules, the other from ravaged forests, a smoky sky, and angry rivers thick with debris. Male and female stood together on both sides, shifting nervously. A meeting this size was unprecedented. Ma…

Jennifer waited expectantly for an answer while staring at her phone. Her mum had warned her about talking to strangers on the internet but it was 2018 and the world was far more connected than ever before. Besides it wasn't like she had given her number …

I ran through the tunnels, following the sounds of your laughter as they bounced off the walls around me. The shape of the tunnels played tricks on my ears -- every time I thought I was close to catching you, I turned a corner to find you were no longer t…

I feel like I am a single cell in some great dying beast. It thrashes and the earth bleeds thickly, feverish and broken. It's so obvious but no one pays attention. I have to wonder that if I am a cell in this thing, could the right cell save such a massiv…

There are times when music reaches me. I'm open to it, vulnerable to a melody, a drum beat, or even the sound of a single note. It vibrates my exposed self and affects my emotional state. I become a mirror of the string that the guitarist plucks and the e…

The music grew louder as the pattern repeated. Drawing Adrian across the boundary that separated sleep and wakefulness, it began the collapse of the dream behind them. It wasn't an unpleasant sound, in fact he had chosen the ring because it made him think…

Responder pruned, collapsing in on itself, shrinking down like bacon in a frying pan. I knew from the few weeks since he'd shown up that the intensity of his emotional distress dictated the amount of area he lost. This was the worst I'd ever seen, losing …

Peter's skin itched as if people were watching him. He knew that he was alone in his apartment but the feeling was so strong that he looked over one shoulder and then the other. His living room lay behind him and while it wasn't well lit any more, ever si…

"All hands, prepare for atmospheric entry."

It was a warning, not an order. The crew had been prepared for at least an hour.

Armored Infantry Captain Danielle Freiz was thoroughly annoyed, because her entire squad was late.

In fact, she wasn't even sur…

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It was a beautiful night. The power was out on our block, so I had a gorgeous view of the Milky Way. Our Husky, Demetria, decided that the middle of the yard would be a wonderful place to howl at the moon. I expected that our neighbour, ever the one to lo…

There is something not quite right with the world. It teems with chaos, madness, and sudden death. Worse than quick ones are the deaths that linger on accompanied by unbearable, untreatable pain. That which isn't it out to get us will surely let us die wi…

Story is marked as mature

He came in with a haunted look in his eyes. A fine suit hung from his frame, slightly threadbare but still lending an air of battered elegance. His gaze caught on the shelves full of jars, clinking gently against each other despite the utter absence of an…

Start with a knife, a tree, a candle, a corpse. Start with a dead bird and its dead feathers spread out about it, mites crawling across it.

Start with the spark of a match being struck; the brown honeycomb scraping, smudging phosphorous and chlorate toge…