I'd had so many plans, just before I went back. I was prepared to an insane degree. I'd spent days camping in the wilderness, gathering enough iron to create a goddamned magnet. I'd memorized the fundamentals of aviation, chemistry, nuclear physics. I knew all there was to know about rebuilding civilization.

And it had all slipped away, one memory after another, fading into a blur, after I'd fallen through the time vortex.

So here I am, trying to explain to some neolithic ignoramus how to make gunpowder. The most I can remember is that it requires a mixture of sulfur,...

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"Just drink the tea, Maggie." Custom said. He had set up a beautiful table with scones and tea and all the fripperies that go with it.
"I don't think so." Maggie said. She appreciated the gesture of friendship but Custom had been trying to control her for too many years for her to trust him now.
"I didn't poison it." He said, petulantly. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair to sulk.
"I'm sure you didn't but I've come too far now to bow to you." Maggie said as she hiked up her skirt...

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Let's play a little word association game. I'll start. Are you ready for the word? I'll wait.
Ready now? Okay.
Potatoes.
No, now you say something else. Let's try again.
Potatoes.
No, see, you just repeated my word again. This isn't an echo game, you're not supposed to be the Grand Canyon. Let's try again.
Potatoes.
Okay, seriously, say what comes to mind when I say the word potatoes! I know, obviously the word potatoes comes to mind, but you have to say something else. Because that's how the game works! Come on, son, you're better than this!
What's that?...

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Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. It wasn't a normal doorway because when I say doorway you think of things like wood and brass nobs and, possibly, hinges.

This had none of those.

And it was hardly a red gown, because you are likely thinking of something you'd take to a ball, or if you're the really twisted sort, and I can tell you are, there's an image of a piece of clothing given out to a somewhat disturbing institution, or asylum, for those less inclined to modern verbiage or intent on...

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I met him on the beach. He sat, fully clothed, legs ajar with a cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth, ash dropping sullenly, almost petulantly into the faded crotch of his blue jeans. His eyes were a-glaze, his raybans askew and he hadn’t seem to notice me sitting down beside him.

It was night. Behind us various Reggaeton tunes blared from various speakers, set outside the rows and rows of cocktail shacks at the side of the beach, all selling cheap and strong and just how we liked to drink it. The sky was jet and pinpricked with...

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Tina is at 6 AM mass every day, no fail. Masses in the Catholic church only change once a week and they revert back every year. In the five years since she's gone daily to mass, she's heard this particular mass 33 times already. Blessed is she among women.

The sanctuary at St. Agnes' smells like a basement. There is mold, dust, incense, old women with wool stockings and perfume. The pew closest to the door on the right-hand side is where Tina always sits. There isn't even a kneeler on it and Tina genuflects with her knees on the...

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The children were not at school. Not today with a masked gunman roaming the streets. Everyone was indoors with the doors bolted, probably hiding in closets, attics or basements.

Jess was outside in the sunshine, on the swing. Whooshing high in the air and back down, laughing aloud, breaking the silence, wondering where the helicopters were, the swat cars, armed police.

She felt as though she was the only person left on earth.

Perhaps she was.

That's what the gunman thought when he spotted her long dark hair through the gap in the fence.

He was tired by now, wanted...

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Captive. Surrounded by watr, the woman could not breathe, could not fight, could not even open her eyes. Her waist was bound and her feet were weighted and she was sinking. Soon to be erased.

The man in the boat had asked her one last question before he rolled her out. Now, sinking like a parachuter, she did not think about her little boy at home, or her parents (they would be so sad), or all the things she would leave behind. No. Her last moments, the last grains of sand in her proverbial hourglass, and Mari was thinking about...

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Beer - Bier - l'alcool - it's all you really wanted

You are just so damn cold, inside and out. First day of November and you wake up to snowfall. All day you stayed inside trying to forget things: forget to find a job, forget to write up resumés, forget to eat, forget to follow through. But now you're outside and it's dark; it's been dark since 17:00. You're outside and it's cold; temperatures dropping to 2°c today. Guten Morgen the world said and Guten Nacht you told yourself. The damn cold just won't go away, the umbrella doesn't hide...

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I had a dream the other night. We were sitting alone in our rooms, all of us, every single one, when suddenly —

The walls just fell away. There was no sound, no pyrotechnics; with a quiet resignation, all the matter in the world, except for our warm, breathing bodies, fell down into the void, leaving us floating purposelessly, naked.

And we all looked at each other, as the psychic frameworks that we etched into the streets, into our homes – our routines, our beaten paths, all the conventions that existed not in the world, but in the world as...

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