With a roar of displaced air and grinding gears, the blast shields protecting the gun emplacements retracted, and the defensive batteries opened fire. A river of hot lead and explosive ordnance spewed forth at the oncoming creature.
It barely stumbled. What didn't explode harmlessly against its armored carapace whistled by as its eldritch powers deflected the bulk of the barrages.
Attack helicoptors and missile-laden jets zoomed by, but they were mere gnats to the attacker. It lumbered ever closer to the fortress.
General Davis grimaced as a swipe of its claws downed an entire Blackhawk squadron. It wouldn't be long...
he ran into the room, his heart pounding and his clothes soaking wet. yet it wasn't dripping water it was dripping blood. Revenge was all the man had told him before he pounded at him. Revenge for what? what have i ever done? he looked for his phone and once he saw it he heard a pounding on the door. the house shook whenever the man pounded the door."you killed her! you killed her!" i heard him screaming and that's when i heard the door burst open and i could hear his heavy feet climbing the stairs. i dialed for...
She screamed at me. I only rose my voice to make sure she heard me over her rant. She seemed to think that i was a wall that she could just yell at and i would'nt do anything. but she was wrong. i was wondering how our friendship got to this point. then, one day, it was my mother who gave me a revelation that clicked all the pieces together. the day we started getting choppy was also the day that 1) my newer, other friend stepped into our lives, and 2) she got chased up a tree by a...
Dancing dreams over streams of lightning. My brain is fried rice; your hands delightening. Totally cavernous, and almost incestuous; your wrists are bound by mustard eloquence. Queens beans scenes on stages; pages without wages, and slaves in conclaves. Your anus my innards, your penis, my skin hurts just thinking about your gym shoes on my lips; your sweaty cunt on my knee. You picked me up by my underwear and hung my on some trees. I spit on your lungs, my farts on your tongues. Some senses smell and some fences swell. Your ass hurts? My toes squirt. This is...
"Hello."
"What?"
"Hi."
"Who are you? No, wait. Where are you?"
"Look up."
"You're in the sky?"
"We are."
"You're..."
"Butterflies. Yes. Does this bother you?"
"To be honest, less than it should."
"We have been watching you. We saw that you were different. We chose you."
"Chose me for what?"
"The time is coming and we are here to warn you. To warn all of you."
"Warn us? What are you, some sort of prophet."
"We are of God, if that is what you mean."
"Ah."
"We bring you a message from the depths of chaos, the heart of...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. The doorway was not the kind of doorway best suited to huddling, and the gown appeared equally ill-designed for the purpose. Yet huddle she did. The rain dripped and sputtered from the sky, streaking her scarlet back as it fell.
After a time, she carefully unhuddled and picked up the bag that she had lain down beside her. She withdrew from it a small, glass orb, in which indistinct shapes and colours seemed to float. Lightning flashed briefly across the sky and as she held the...
She wanted to hear the whispers in the next room, but the pleading to her ears were also unheard. She stretched up onto her toes as if height would give her hearing a greater advantage.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing. Go away!" she frantacilly whispered, ushering her little brother out of the room with her eyes.
She suddenly heard footsteps approaching, and she pressed her small frame against the wall as to not to be seen. The red drapes of the gown following like an obedient shadow.
"If that is what she wants, that is how it will be."
The...
The ceremony was fine, stuffy and long but fine. The party had been alright, except that her father had booked a stuffy classical six piece when they really wanted to get a soul band.
But the father-in-law was paying so you could only say so much, and she never ever stood up to him anyway. So he had to spend five hours in a restrictive tuxedo, stealing glances at her as she danced with her father, with the best man, nodding and smiling as old ladies pulled at his arms so they could kiss his cheeks and congratulate him, telling...
"Dragonflies are good luck," his grandmother used to say. "They are fairies' horses. Their wings spread wishes and wonder."
He remembered that and not much else about her. They would sit in the grass by the shore of the lake. He used to spend three weeks every summer out at his grandparents house. They picked blueberries and chopped wood, made cookies and walked in the woods.
He was an adult now. They were long dead.
His daughter stood in front of him, frowning, hands onm hips. "That's not true, daddy. Dragonflies are dragonflies, not horses. And fairies don't exist."
He...
He hadn't wanted the light there.
She had insisted - there was light on her, light on her voice, lifting her up, letting them all see her. He was playing too (had a solo during one of the songs, actually) so why shouldn't they see him?
He'd tried to protest that it wasn't traditional, and she'd just given him one of those looks, the one that made him certain that if ever (...when) she did get signed the record label wouldn't be able to force her into one of those moulds they seemed so fond of.
He'd stood his ground,...