The desert rose would always grow.
It knew nothing of circumstances beyond its control. Nothing of bodies drying in the sun, baked by heat on the hot sand. All that mattered was the sun and the wind and just enough moisture to survive.
The girl turned, picked the pink blossom, and tucked it into the soldier's kaki colored uniform. The color clashed happily with the washed out surroundings, almost as much as the smile with which he repaid her small kindness.
I liked Erica, but Daddy didn't. She did everything for him, like the man on the advert said she would, and it had meant I wouldn't have to anymore.
She had mousy hair and it fell around her pale face in curls. She always smiled at me with her pretty eyes and high cheek bones, and at Daddy. Though he would never smile back.
Erica was always sweet and loving and kind, just like Mummy had been.
I still feel sad when I think of Mummy sometimes. Especially when I happened to brush Erica's skin. It was cold. Not like...
The wind blew across the plains, picking up clods of dirt as it ran past, and I gripped my son's shoulder, as if by some instinct. Soon the dust would blow through the cracks in our log cabin, and the kitchen -- the tiny corner we called the kitchen -- would soon fill with what looked for all the world like soot. That we could take. The ground and the wind had been trying to kill us for years. We were used to it. But lately we'd had to contend with spiders. Tarantulas. Tough sons of bitches that put their...
In the little house, Brigid waited for the big lady to leave. She wanted peace, and the special sound of wind when no one was around. Kneeling people interrupted the woosh of air that made her forgetful. Kneeling people made her remember everything about praying and wanting things outside her little house. This was a House for Not Praying, for Not Wanting. But all these big people came. A miracle had happened here and she couldn't get rid of them. The gravel she laid out specially over what had been soft grass cut into their old knees and young knees...
Tremain's exhibit had been the talk of the New York press, but Lorenzo had resisted all invitations to attend until now. The reason he gave was always the same: as a Lower East Side resident the thought of trudging to Williamsburg was too much. It was a rote answer, but had worked until his editor called upon him to cover the event.
So, pass in hand, he hopped the train to Brooklyn and made his way to the implacable studio with it's red litten windows and strangely unsettling industrial facade.
Once inside, he was met by a circle of art...
As he wandered through the countryside, he couldn't quite believe he'd done it. He'd done it. Gene Black had actually done it. Finally. And although it had been something he had been planning for months, years, maybe his whole life, he didn't feel quite as good as he thought he would.
He had dreamed of being a murderer for as long as he could remember. He had wanted to feel life draining away in his hands, to watch as the soul departed the body. If it did. It was all about experimentation and, perhaps understandably, there was nothing he could...
I'm lost.
The corn fields turned into and endless turning of green upon green, and I couldn't run because the leaves had become blades.
I've stopped walking. I've stopped screaming. Screaming only made me thirsty, and I even tried tearing a corn leaf to pieces to suck on something, anything. I tried to pull an ear and when I pulled the leaves back, a handful of black ear wigs fell onto my lap, pincher butts spread wide. I wiped them off and ran.
Something cut my upper arm.
I lay now, staring at the sky, it's gone from gray to...
The dapper man picked up a penny. Having stopped, he was hit by an unsuspecting driver who failed to see him get skewered by the starting handle from the high cab of the grocer's van. At first I smiled for having placed the coin, specially bought at auction 68 years from now. And then… absolutely nothing happened.
When SciFi authors tell you of the Grandfather Paradox, don't believe a bloody word. I'd spent a fortune, and most of my adult life pushing the boundaries of Quantum Symmetry, SuperStrings and a host of other areas of Science and Technology. All for...
If humans are mostly water, what happens when you remove it?
This was the idle yet macabre thought that raced through Remdrick's brain as he performed routine maintenance on his vehicle. It may not have been the most current model, but Remdrick's needs were few. It needed to be space-worthy, it needed to have ample power, an electronic library, and living quarters sufficient for him and his pet. Though if she died during the nearly 120 year-long trip, he wanted a way to preserve the body- it would be nice to bury Mildred on the new homeworld. As things stood...
Cuthbert was a fairly average Crocodile, with the expected number of teeth and glinting eyes like two marbles set in his swarthy head. He was not a particularly happy Crocodile though, as he was kept in a pen in a tourist attraction, where he was made to jump fifteen feet in the air to obtain his dinner, which was invariably a raw, plucked chicken on the end of a long pole. He found this predictable, boring and undignified.
So, one day, like any other. When the crowd gathered to watch his feat, cameras and phones poised to record him springing...