So by now we all know that there’s no logical explanation why honeybees can fly, weight and wings and stuff, it shouldn’t be possible, but bees fly anyway. Perhaps bees are magical creatures, then. And the drop in bees’ quantity is alarming to the wizardi…

The thing that spoke to me had the face of a dead god but used the voice of my father. I had known to expect this. It was a by-product of the bonding ritual that gave a semblance of life back to this former deity. Not that any of the gods ever truly died,…

"which flavor cheese?"

"the yellow one."

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Story is marked as mature

Prunella turned from her novel and rolled her eyes in copious disgust.

"Okay, so... Yeah. We've got this." Captain Gaia looked us over. "Hero Corps, let's..."

"Uh, question." Even I couldn't believe I had spoken up, never mind that I had just interrupted Captain Gaia!

He stared at me for a moment. "Is this going to tak…

I held that piece of flesh up before me, bitter distaste filling my mouth. If what my father and I had done before had been blasphemy, this was surely something far worse, to desecrate the body of a god in such a way.

And yet it was necessary. This war b…

I don't know how I made it through what came next. The next days were a blur of pain, both physical and emotional, and fever dreams, in the rare moments when I slept.

My first task was to split the figure of my father in half, carefully using the tools o…

It would be quicker to go through town but Grims didn't want to carry the corpse through the streets of Eggtown South. He already had a reputation, hard and bitter, but there was a difference between being rumored as a child-killer and toting a dead one d…

Grims slung his rifle then bent to the body. Blood dribbled from the kid's mouth, but not much. Three shots center mass had assured the kid died quickly.

A little blood, but it was enough. The yips and yowls sounded closer. Death was on the air now, and …

Grims surveyed the horizon moving only his eyes. He held a long butted rifle against his shoulder, barrel hot enough to warm the air near his neck. Nothing moved. The jamperscamps and mooncats had vanished at the sound of the first shot. In the ruddiness …

Please move along, he said, as he climbed over the fence. It is easy to think that what he was doing was untoward, after all, on the other side of the fence was a pride of hungry lions.

What would it be like to break into a hundred different worlds? A thousand? Would he ever get used to it, the way you get used to the routines of a new job? Ray looked at the device he held in his hand. Abruptly, he tossed it up, sending it spinning end o…

There's a darkness in you. It hides in our whole family. It's a sickness that must be fought and accepted in equal parts. I know it. You won't, not until you look inside yourself without flinching and recognize that your darkness shares your face. It's in…

Well the new pickles of the litter got along great with me, we played tag and price and code and dead and then we all bundled up in our garters and gilt and glit and flit and kilt and were in the bin of shipping in a nonce.

The dear improprietor of me got…

Dear Dairy,

Today was an awesome day! !

You know that carton of pickles in the back of our fridge, the one on the roof? Well I was gnawing on the wrapper this morning when I finally broke through the plastic frieze packaging and got a mouthful of brine. …

At the sound of Grouse's shout Beckton turned - pivoting on both feet and dropping to one knee at once, just as an older man in a dark-grey overcoat and (somewhat incongruously) a German-style steel helmet came around the corner in pursuit.

The private,…

Social situations were fraught with problems that invariably led to people getting hurt and so Bob went out only to get the necessities of life and was never out for long. He was also a hoarder. His residence was littered with the remnants of past meals n…

He hefted the axe, testing its balance. The razor sharp edges of the bronze blades glittered in the sunlight. Abruptly, he tossed it up, sending it spinning end over end before catching it again.

Father would have been furious with him, to risk an inju…

Irritation built as Anders stepped past the perimeter marker of Base Camp Aktina. No matter how loud he turned his music up, the sound of metal on metal always cut through. He was up to seven and still he could hear dozens of knives being sharpened at the…

How does this story start? It starts with the thought that my stories rarely lie down in the page in an effective way right from the start, that the story often goes through significant revisions until I find the right beginning. Just as this paragraph …

Screams, hundreds of them, howled in waves. Sometimes they joined together in choral unison, almost like a hymn, sometimes in overlapping layers clashing to be heard. It was as if the tortured voices from every hospital and from every war zone that had ev…

Jeremy knelt, his breath catching at the beauty. This find was proving to be an even greater treasure than he'd ever imagined. Using a tiny brush, he dusted up and down the length of the axe. Once this was polished up, it would outshine every other piece …

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…

Bombs.

.

.

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Rain.

.

.

.

Down.

.

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.

Trembling, we breathe.

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