Win a signed galley copy of Greg Bear & Neal Stephenson's upcoming collaborative book: The Mongoliad! (plus excerpt)

All seven authors of the first novel of The Mongoliad have signed a galley copy to be given to one lucky Boing Boing reader!

The trailer above stars Neal "Mr. Excitement" Stephenson describing the book in his usual bombastic style.

See below for the contest rules, and the exclusive excerpt from the novel.

On April 24, from the minds of Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear comes The Mongoliad Trilogy, the first installment in the Foreworld Saga, a collaborative series unlike any other that will enthrall fans of fantasy, martial arts, and historical fiction.

The Foreworld medieval adventure saga was actually born out of swordfighting. Stephenson and the other authors are avid practitioners of Western martial arts and they are part of an enthusiastic study group in Seattle. io9.com reports that Stephenson realized that the descriptions of swordfighting in his novels would have been much better with contributions from people with fighting expertise. Thus the idea for a saga about the complex, bloody history of Western martial arts was born, featuring Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, E.D. deBirmingham, Joseph Brassey, Erik Bear, and Cooper Moo.

The first novel to be released in the saga, The Mongoliad: Book One is an epic-within-an-epic, taking place in 13th century. In it, a small band of warriors and mystics raise their swords to save Europe from a bloodthirsty Mongol invasion. Inspired by their leader (an elder of an order of warrior monks), they embark on a perilous journey and uncover the history of hidden knowledge and conflict among powerful secret societies that had been shaping world events for millennia.

But the saga unfolds on a truly grand scale for it comes to the modern world via a circuitous route. In the late 19th century, Sir Richard F. Burton, an expert on exotic languages and historical swordsmanship, is approached by a mysterious group of English martial arts aficionados about translating a collection of long-lost manuscripts. Burton dies before his work is finished, and his efforts were thought lost until recently rediscovered by a team of amateur archaeologists in the ruins of a mansion in Trieste, Italy. From this collection of arcana, the incredible tale of The Mongoliad was recreated.

More than just a story, The Mongoliad is an sweeping narrative firmly rooted in history, taking readers back to a time when Europeans thought that the Mongol Horde was about to destroy their world -- and it was up to the exploits of one small band of mystics and warriors to turn the tide of history.

Full of high adventure, unforgettable characters, and unflinching battle scenes, The Mongoliad ignites a dangerous quest where willpower and blades are tested and the scope of world-building is redefined.

CONTEST RULES: Write a 9-sentence short story and post it in the comments. The first letter of the first sentence must start with the letter M. The first letter of the second sentence must start with the letter O.The first letter of the third sentence must start with the letter N. In other words, the first letter of each sentence must spell out M.O.N.G.O.L.I.A.D. I will pick my favorite story and have the book sent to the author. The deadline is April 19 at midnight Pacific time.

The Monogoliad, Book One. Excerpt from CHAPTER 11: The Bankhar.

The reeds were tall enough to hide Cnan, as long as she skittered through them in a crouch. She could not see more than arm's length in any direction, and so she paused every so often to check the direction of the sun and make sure she had not strayed from her line: straight along the slowest, shallowest flow of the main channel, close enough to the bank that the reeds remained high, not so close that the ground beneath her feet turned into sucking mud. This path would cut between the Mongols who were surrounding the huts on the opposite side of the swale and the main force on the near side. The only thing the least bit chancy about it was that it might bring her nearer to the patrol Raphael had noticed crossing between the Mongol groups; but all she need do is keep her wits about her and squat low if she heard hoof beats. Gazing into the sun, they would never see her. Her movements might shake the tops of the reeds. But here fortune was with her again, for the southwest breeze was shaking all of the reeds, and as long as she didn't do anything stupid, like move in a perfectly straight line or trample the stalks into the mud, she would be hard to detect.

Those men were distracted anyway -- she could tell as much from their shouts. Trying to deliver some urgent news to the main group, but unable to make themselves heard over the wind whispering through a million stalks.

This was hardly a way for Cnan to make good time, but before long she would be past them and into a section where she could make her way down disused channels or dart from one stone outcropping to the next, favoring the long shadows of the late evening.

The more she could collect from sounds, the less she needed to risk looking. Splashing hooves told her that the patrol had found a ford. Light clashing at first as the horses -- she guessed four of them -- trotted through ankle-deep water. Then deeper sloshing as they went in up to their knees, followed by near silence as they passed through the gut of the channel, the horses' bellies, she imagined, carving wakes in the stream like boats' hulls. Then relieved and satisfied words from the riders as they felt the ground angle upward again, sporadic liquid bursts as knees broke the surface, and then the same series of noises, reversed in order, until hooves were once again thumping on solid ground -- this side of the river, perhaps an arrow-shot ahead of her.

She was about to risk movement again when her ears picked up something else: another creature emerging from the river, following in the wake of the horses. Not a man, for it went on four feet, but too small for a horse.

Then a shuddering, flopping noise, enveloped in a hiss of spray.

She crouched and froze. It was a dog. It had entered the ford at the same time as the four riders, but fallen behind as its paws floated free of the river bottom, forcing it to paddle across the main stream, fighting the current the whole way. Finally it had trotted up onto the shore and shaken itself. It let out a suggestion of a whine, seeing how far behind it had fallen, then sprang forward, running to make up for lost time. Then, just before entering the tunnel that the horses had trampled through the reeds, the dog stopped.

Stopped, and sniffed the air.

It happened to be straight downwind of her.

Dogs had poor eyesight. She rose just high enough to see it. She did not recognize it at first because she had been imagining something in the way of a hound, small and lithe. But what she saw, casting about for her scent, looked more like a bear. She'd seen them before. She'd even been chased by them. And she had watched others, not as skillful at evading pursuit or climbing trees, being torn apart by them. This was a bankhar: one of the heavy-boned mastiffs that the Mongols kept roped outside their tents as watchdogs.

They must have been using it to track Istvan.

And it knew she was here. That was obvious from its posture: it stood on its stout, corded legs as still as she was. Other than a slight quiver of its flanks, the only thing it moved was its nostrils. It would hold this stillness for as long as it took to catch a definite scent or hear some movement. Then every muscle in its body would go into action. If it was like the others she had seen, it had twice her weight, and could run at double her speed.

Again a faint whine. The great head lifted and turned. The massive jaws opened in a slow pant. The bankhar was trying to make sense of the new spoor. Watching it, she found herself wondering what it could guess about her. The scent it had found was human, but not the one it had been tracking for the last couple of days. Her scent would betray her sex, obviously, but could it tell if she was frightened? She wasn't. Not yet; but she would be soon.

She couldn't run. To trigger the chase instinct of a bankhar was death -- about the worst kind of death imaginable. Better to stand and face it.

It gave out a low, gruff bark, declining to a suspicious growl, and began trotting toward her, lowering its head and casting its heavy muzzle back and forth.

Cnan backtracked along the trail of parted reeds she had made in her own wake. Putting more distance between herself and the dog couldn't hurt, as long as she did it quietly -- and she could move very quietly. There were no trees to climb. She couldn't outrun a bankhar on open ground. She could probably outswim it, though. But first she would have to get to water that was deep enough for swimming and too deep for the dog's paws to get purchase on the bottom. She remembered a backwater, about a stone's throw behind her where she had suddenly slipped knee-deep into a stagnant pool. A lateral sprint out of the reeds, across the intervening sandbar, and straight for the water might work. But it was her last resort; it would betray her position, not only to the bankhar, which would come right at her, but to the four Mongol riders now picking their path up a rocky stretch of riverbank, still oblivious to the fact that their dog was on the trail of new and unexpected prey.

He -- for she could see now that it was an ungelded male -- let out a little woof and broke into a trot, confident now that she was worth chasing. She began retreating with greater speed and more noise, fighting what the Shield-Brothers referred to as the fobo, the irrational fear that would, if you let it rise out of its hole, seize control of your body and make you do things that would assuredly lead to your death. In this case, the fobo was telling her to turn on her heel and run for it.

The ground grew muckier under her feet. She risked a quick look, saw the dark backwater growing closer and closer, but it was shallow enough that the bankhar could wade it, and it was separated from the main channel by a sandbar, which she would have to cross before the creature plunged its fangs into her leg.

She prepared to slip off her tunic. She could trail it behind herself as she ran. The dog would snap at it, rip it out of her grasp, waste a few moments shaking it like a squirrel while she dove naked into the water and swam away . . .

Or was that the fobo trying to bubble up?

A whine from the bankhar quickly rose to a shrill bark. It was very close now.

Her feet felt the backwater's slimy edge. This was foolish.

She stood tall and faced the dog. Startled, it plowed to a stop. Then it barked loudly and steadily, alerting its masters. She glanced over its head and saw the four Mongols. One had reached the top of the bank and was looking in her direction. The other three abandoned their climb, turned, and began picking their way down the bank to see what was happening. They first spotted the bankhar, then her, and pointed, exclaimed, stood high in their stirrups to get a clearer view -- and reached for their bows.

Keeping the bankhar in sight but not staring it in the eye, Cnan slowly sidestepped, going knee-deep into the stagnant water, a loop of current only a couple of arm-spans across. The bankhar started after her, stopped, growled, barked again. A bluff charge, trying to make her panic and break for it.

She did not like dogs, but she understood them in the same way as she understood men: they needed a leader. A boss. And if you weren't the boss, the dog would appoint himself to the position. It had nothing to do with size. She had seen a rat-chaser dominate a lumbering wolfhound with the sheer force of its personality.

She locked her eyes on the bankhar and willed it to submit.

A rumbling growl emerged from its huge chest.

She backed up out of the water and onto the sandbar.

One of the Mongols was riding straight for her. She could feel the terror rising in her chest, her heart hammering at the underside of her breastbone, booming in her ears.

The Mongol called out a word of command. The bankhar looked back at him, remembered who was boss, bounded into the water and came up on the sandbar, close enough that he could have reached Cnan's throat with a single lunge. Only some cautious instinct, a concern that Cnan was more than she seemed, prevented him from killing her then and there.

Her fear took charge. She knew she was about to die -- if not ripped apart by the bankhar, then shot through and through by the Mongol following after or the two behind him. Her heart slammed with such force that she could feel it in the soles of her feet.

Her feet?

The dog looked beyond her suddenly, then crouched and quailed. A word of astonishment escaped from the Mongol's lips.

Cnan swiveled in the water and mud just in time to see a colossus thundering up out of the river's channel, over the crest of the little sandbar, then springing nearly over her head, hooves plowing the air. She fell to the ground more from vertigo than anything else and lost sight of it for a moment. Twisting about again, she saw the bankhar somersault backwards, a red missile hurtling from its shoulders to tumble along the sandbar.

Stumbling in reeds and muck, catching herself and straightening, she identified the colossus: a man on a horse. The setting sun was on his back, and his armor shined in her eyes. His left hand held the steed's reins, his right gripped a short staff whose head was lazily orbited by a fist-size lump of black iron studded with spikes. The spikes threw off a thick spray of dog's blood.

The bankhar had skidded to a halt and lay on its back, one hind leg jerking. Half its head was missing.

The interval between the bankhar and the lead Mongol was a long stone's throw. Percival, in full gallop, took it in a few thundering hoof-strikes. The iron ball, tracing an unhurried and inexorable path at the end of its taut chain, accelerated suddenly and passed without apparent loss of speed into the side of the Mongol's face -- for he was attempting to turn away -- and out the back of his skull.

Percival studied the reeds. "A spare!" he remarked casually.

She was dumbfounded for a moment, then realized that he was addressing her.

"Should I -- " she fumbled.

"No. Reach the other side of the river," he said, and, ignoring the two Mongols who were down at the river's level, spurred his destrier forward hard and steered it directly toward what looked like a low place in the bank. The steed faltered then understood, drove itself at the notch in the skyline, and attempted the leap. Its front hooves came up on the top. Its hind legs had to scrabble at the bank for a few anxious moments, peeling off shovel-loads of dusty earth. But then its massive hindquarters bucked up into the air, and it was on the lip of the scarp. With a cry of triumph or encouragement, Percival drove it hard to the left, headed, apparently, straight for the lone Mongol who had made it to the top earlier.

And then Cnan lost sight of him.

The two Mongols remaining on the sandbar were finally unlimbering their bows. She doubted that they could hit her from this distance if she kept moving and made use of cover, but one could never tell when a lucky shot might strike home, and so she was disinclined to wait around and see what happened. She completed the move she had been trying to make while fleeing the bankhar, sidestepping across the bar to the main channel of the river. She had to take her eyes away from the Mongols for a few moments as she picked her way over a slimy fallen log.

When she looked back, one of the Mongols was settling awkwardly to his knees, reaching up as if to make some adjustment in his helmet. Then she noticed a shaft going in one side of his neck, angled downward, and she concluded that an arrow fired from the other side of the river had struck him.

She turned, dove, and swam for a dozen strokes. The current was sweeping her downstream toward the concealed archer, but she reckoned that was no bad thing, and so she did not fight it, putting all of her energy instead into crossing the channel.

When she felt the bank rising beneath her feet again, she turned to look, letting only the top few inches of her head jut out of the stream. Now came the same thunder in the earth that had preceded the demise of the bankhar, and sure enough Percival's head, and that of his war-horse, rose majestically above the edge of the bank. He had holstered the flail he'd used to such effect against the dog and the first Mongol, and now held a bloody lance in one hand and a teardrop-shaped shield in the other. Two arrows jutted from the shield, suggesting that the second Mongol had put up more of a fight. Thus encumbered, he let the horse find its own way down to the riverbank. Percival kept a sharp eye on the one surviving Mongol, who had sought cover in the reeds and was raising his bow. Percival was plainly visible from the bank's top. With an easy plunge of his shield, the armored knight collected a third arrow that would have pierced his mount's shoulder.

A shaft flew directly over Cnan's head and arced downward into the reeds; a bowman on her side of the bank -- she guessed it was Raphael -- was hoping for a lucky shot.

The destrier crashed down into the reed-bed, Percival leaning so far back that, for a moment, he was nearly supine on its quarters. After a few moments of staggering about and realigning, horse and rider were once again united; and Percival now did something that, hard as it was to believe, made Cnan feel sorry for the Mongol: he wheeled on the firmer, sandy bed, and charged, lance fixed at a low angle.

The Mongol understood perfectly well what was about to happen. He leapt up and ran, zig-zagging along the bank, feet sending up silver spray. Like a million terrified victims who had been caught out in the open by the riders of the Khan's hordes, he was now presented with a nasty choice: be trampled into the muck, spine and ribs crushed like so many crusts of bread, or have an eight-foot-long lance skewer his guts.

The Mongol spun about at the last instant, screaming his rage, and chose the lance. Percival gave it to him, hefted until the man's feet dangled, then rode on, torquing the corpse through the reeds until it slid off like a knotted rag. Glittering tails of spray from the horse's hooves almost hid the gore.

Cnan turned away with a sick sensation in her stomach then climbed into a cleft on the northern bank, where she suspected that Raphael was hiding in some gnarly scrub. And that was where she found him, though he had already turned his back to her and was clambering through loose soil toward the crest. As he neared the top, he slowed, crouched, and held out a cautioning hand, warning her not to pop her head up. Then he seemed to change his mind. He'd seen something from the crest that let him know they were all right. He vaulted onto flat ground, resumed his squat, and gave Cnan a hand up. From any of the others -- with, as always, the exception of Percival -- she would not have taken kindly to this gesture. She was perfectly capable . . . but something in Raphael's manner always let her know that between her and him, things were simple and fine, and so she slapped her hand into his and kicked against the bank with both feet until he'd hauled her over the top.

Below and behind them, Percival was collecting the Mongols' horses, stringing them out on a line so that they could be led.

"Spares," Cnan said.

"Good," Raphael answered, and nodded across the river: not along the main channel, but to the south bank, which Cnan, trapped in the low reeds, had not been able to see until now. The first thing she noticed was the reed-hung corpse of the Mongol whom Percival had run down and slain during his foray over the bank's top. But then her eyes were drawn by movement farther off.

The hilltop where the main body of the Mongol force had gathered a while ago was now bare, but something like an avalanche or mudslide seemed to be flowing down its near side, throwing up a dusty plume that glowed like fire in the light of the setting sun.

They had been seen. The Mongols were coming for them.

"Gorgeous, in its way," Raphael remarked dryly, "but I don't recommend we marvel much longer. You, at any rate, are unlikely to take in any new or useful impressions."

"What the hell are you doing then?" she snapped.

"I believe I shall tarry, in case Percival needs assistance. I may be able to help him manage the spares, or slow the Mongols when they reach the bank's edge."

"Did you have anything in mind for me?"

"Look in on Eleazar."

"And where is Eleazar?"

"Likely visiting whomever is surrounded in that farm," Raphael said, and he swiveled on deft toes, keeping as low as possible, to gaze in the opposite direction. "Judging from the number of dead and screaming Mongols in its vicinity, I wager it's Istvan."

To Cnan, this did not sound like a plan, or even the beginnings of one, but she knew better than to expect something fully thought-out, and she approved of anything that would take her away from the forty or so horsemen coming for them across the floodplain.

Not far away, Raphael had tied his horse to a lance thrust into the ground. Trailing behind it on a lead, head down, pushing its nose through grass, was the pony Cnan had been riding. She unwound the taut lead from Raphael's saddle and sprang onto the pony's back with a confidence that surprised her. She was not above hoping that one of her companions might have witnessed her dexterity.

She pulled hard on the right rein and dug her heels, then shouted in the way that the men did when they really wanted their mounts to sit up and take notice, and indeed the pony reacted with a neck-arching start and broke into a gallop.

She was now riding hell-for-leather into the battle unfolding in the little farm. This was about half a verst away, on a weak rise that kept it above seasonal floods. From their former vantage point, they'd been able to make out very little of the stead, but now, closer, Cnan could see that it was an untidy warren of lean-tos, outbuildings, sheds, sties, smokehouses, coops, and stables. Not satisfied with that, the residents had added a haphazard assortment of peat ricks, haystacks, trellises, hutches, and beehives.

Cnan, in the last couple of years, had become a connoisseur of hiding-places, shunning the open and gravitating toward the hidden, the complex, the knotted and gnarled -- anyplace confusing and nasty for warriors and hunters. Had she been chased across the floodplain by Mongols -- as, come to think of it, was now the case -- she'd have gone straight to this farm. She'd have kindled a fire in the hearth, done all she could to make them think she was lodged in the main house, and then she'd have crept to its outskirts, buried herself in dung or straw, and peered out at them.

Waited them out. Watched and learned.

Istvan had likely done something similar. Cnan could not know this for certain -- she had not yet reached the farm -- but Raphael seemed to think Istvan was still alive, and it was simply not possible that he could have survived any other way.

Drawing closer, she saw evidence of a fray: Mongol bodies draped over split-rail fences, then what might have been a Russian noble in a black cape, sprawled and muddy in a hog-wallow. More Mongols lay curled like fetuses around moldy bits of tossed haystack -- along with one dead cow, its flank covered with arrows. Someone had cut the animal's throat and taken shelter behind the dead bulk.

Istvan had done more than just hide and watch. Some of the dead lay where they had fallen, but others had been arranged in grotesque postures. At some point -- and recently, since only a little while ago they had seen ten live Mongols surrounding this place -- Istvan had crept from concealment and gone to work with fast, eager blades, at close quarters. For the Mongols, keen on killing their prey, had committed the error of dismounting and entering that filthy and tumbledown maze. Not understanding that the one they'd been hunting was no terrified fugitive. Not just another gleaner, run to ground, praying that he could find some way to slip out of the noose.

Istvan had been waiting for them, chewing his mushrooms, timing it, perhaps, so that the ecstasy would come over him at just the right moment.

It had been a long day of odd and unforgettable sights, and now, another presented itself: a Mongol backing away from the corner of a poultry hutch, slashing and thrusting with a short curved blade. He cared nothing for what lay behind his stumbling feet, but stared in horror and grunted like a whipped donkey -- for the last second of his life.

From around the hutch, striking from on high like a silver bolt, a six-foot sword caught the Mongol where neck joins the shoulder, sliced down through his torso, and emerged from his opposite side, just above the hipbone. The two halves of him fell in opposite directions, intestines boiling out, as if they'd waited twenty years for an opportunity to leap free.

Not Istvan's work -- that huge sword.

Eleazar stepped into view, making no effort to break the sword's momentum but letting it follow through, raising his hands above his head to keep its tip from plunging into the ground. He gracefully stepped around with the sword's point as the center of his arc, checking behind to make sure that no one else was creeping up.

Getting caught in this melee was not going to help Cnan, and might complicate matters for Eleazar and (assuming he was in there somewhere) Istvan, and so she drew back and spoke calmly to her mount, peeling off from her course and convincing the horse to adopt a judicious trotting gait.

Not a horse person, she'd been slow to understand the others' fascination with spares. It made sense abstractly, of course. But it had taken the sight of the onrushing horde to really fix it in her mind. Several Mongol ponies were now wandering aimlessly about the perimeter of the farmstead, nosing about for forage. Thanks to Istvan, who had apparently shot some of their owners from cover -- she recognized his shafts projecting from the Mongols' bodies -- they were now spares and she reckoned she could do something useful by rounding them up. To her they paid little heed, but they were social animals, and not above joining a herd. So she devoted a little while to gathering up the ponies and leading them in a slow whorl around the farmstead while she counted dead Mongols and waited for the final few to be hunted down by Istvan and Eleazar. The ponies became used to her, and she began speaking to them in Turkic, with which they seemed familiar.

The two knights finally emerged from the warren, and at the same moment, Raphael and Percival came galloping in from the riverbank. Istvan, red with gore, led a few more spares, and Percival, nearly pristine, tugged at a balky string of four. They now had three or four mounts for each of their group.

Cnan joined them. An interesting conversation might now have passed between Istvan and the others, but of course there was no time. Indeed the first and most impetuous of the Mongol outriders was already cresting the bank, though this had to be guessed by sound, rather than sight, as the sun was well down and the scene lit only by grey twilight.

"The woods?" Percival suggested, raising his clutch of reins. "It's either brambles or arrows. I prefer brambles."

"Follow," said Istvan.

So they followed. And the Mongols followed them.

• [Leif Hassell]

  Mesmerized, she stepped forward into the darkening twilight. On any other day, the thought of leaving here would have been ridiculous. Not tonight. Going forward, her steps halting but intent, she stared into the deep purple of the sunset. Outside! Lenore had spent so long behind that door. Imprisoned. Anonymous and alone, she stood before the gloaming sky. Death was only the beginning, after all…

• [patrick hughes]

  “Must we do this, Carlton?”
  “Only if you truly wish to save them, my prince.”
  Neither boy looked at each other as they talked – instead they stared, blinking through tears, at the river of hot shit before them.
  “God, Carlton, it’s … it’s like the Internet or something.”
  “Oh my prince, I love the way you caper and gibber about, with jests and japes,” Carlton sighed.
  Later, the two friends, now stinking and covered in dry shit, entered the main chamber of the castle.
  “I return triumphant, having braved many trials and surmounted many barriers with good Carlton at my side, and have brought my kingdom the prize – a cure for this awful plague,” the prince announced.
  “And how fares the rest of the royal family, our retainers and lords, our beloved subjects?” Carlton asked.
  “Dead,” the old woman croaked, “all dead.” 

• [chellberty]

  Many would say I am mad risking reading and writing in the ancient language of throt.Only those who have seen the remains of the mars first hand could tell you why. Now I must return to the world of our origin. Going back to the place of humanizes and grumpkins is a task not to be taken lightly.Opening the portal and stepping in the oozing mass takes you there immediately. Lying the sacrifice on the ground on the pedestal before the pyramid. Incantations chanted slowly as I lower the knife into their chest . Across the rip in the sky something neither light  lightness nor darkness seeps through. Distortions of the space around the rip is a harbinger of the devastation that follows.

• [Tom White]

  Midnight, and a lone warrior surveys the aftermath. Only the moans of the dying drown out the silence of the dead. Now he rises, slowly, painfully. Great effort is required to lift each battle-fatigued limb up above the other, slowly ascending the hill. Once at the top, he looks down. Loneliness and apathy fill his head and his heart. In a smooth, practised gesture, he draws his sword from its sheath. As he places the point over his heart, he thinks of his family, and of the empire he has failed to protect. Death envelopes him, as he pitches forwards, into the blackness.

• [Tony]

  Marked for Erlik, you were at birth.
  On this day, will you prove your worth?
  Now rise up – with sword in hand.
  Give thanks to the gods for the iron band
  Over their corpse, take their women hold.
  Lay forward this mantra so that they may know.
  I.
  Am.
  Death.

• [bladerunner99]

  My parents sent me to this place. Otherwise, they said, I would have killed, died, or worse; a political dissident at ten years old, they’ve had me locked in this virtual prison the last eight in hopes I’ll be educated out of my personality. Nevermind my own wishes on the matter, they shipped me here so that I could “learn” from the greats of the world.

  Great minds, recreated in this digital space, telling me about their lives and their way of thinking. Out of the mists they’ve stepped, one by one. Life’s funny, really. I don’t think they realized exactly who would be in here with me. Alexander smiles as he teaches me how to conquer a people, how to win hearts and minds, how to become “the Great”. Down in the mists, Caesar and Marx wait their turns. 

• [Marilyn Terrell]

  If you like that giant map behind Neal’s head, check out the ones for sale on the National Geographic site: http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/maps/wall-maps/world-maps/world-mural-map%2C-blue-ocean

• [Joel Ward]

  Mssr. Reynolds, an exclusive importer of fine clothing and accoutrements for gentlemen in the Baltimore environs, was the most recent subject of anarchist art attacks, sometime before the morning of the fifth in the fourth month of the year.

  On the evening of the fourth, Reynolds closed his small but tidy warehouse door on E____ Lane shortly after dusk, according to confidential police reports and examinations, which further tell us that the proprietor had checked to ensure all entrances were locked and windows closed before he exited his business, it having been a tediously hot and humid day requiring him to open multiple windows on the off chance of a refreshing breeze.

  Nothing about the evening or the condition of his establishment alarmed Reynolds as he left the lane and the story.

  Gathered darkness, gathered shadows, gathered night fell on E____ Lane and Baltimore that dreary and overly warm April evening.

  Over the rooftops or from under the city’s fine streets or like ghosts moving along the vertices of buildings, the anarchists must have come to Mssr. Reynolds place of commerce and silk, of fine wool and ebony canes, quiet in their places on the hardwood shelves.

  Loveless perhaps in their poor political pursuits, did they desire the fine polish of wealth as fashion and imagine it would bring them heart’s ease and warm lips wreathed in scented hair?

  Interior schemes unknown, they infiltrated the warehouse – somehow, somehow, without breaking a window, without cracking a lock or a door frame, without shifting ash in the cold chimney even.

  Absconding with only a dozen pairs of men’s finest white gloves and one red silk scarf from Peking, otherwise their work was arduous and artistic but finally without meaning to police or building owner.

  Drawing inspiration from sources unknown, the anarchists turned all the warehouse topsy-turvy and inside out, hanging the best fashions of Paris and London from a thousand wires, floating them in the still air of April like an explosion of fabric and gleaming wood and silver all flying out into endless space from a central point of attention where a small silver tray was arranged with an elegantly printed card upon it, one word only: “Boom!”

• [Brian Cain]

  Whenever I see the unfortunate name of this book all I can think about is the Devo song.

  • [solstone]

     One chromosome too many, but he’s happier than you or me…

• [metafactory]

  M. Only four people new what this meant as we practiced the formation in secret. None of them realized it was a deception that would lead to my singular victory. Galia might have imagined it, after all it was just the sort of devilry she excelled at. Of course she was too caught up in training for the Event to realize another game was in play; M. would bring them all down. Lonely clouds marked the horizon of an otherwise bright morning as we assembled below familiar trees on that little expanse of land behind the institute. I don’t quite remember how it started but our entire cohort was there—nervously milling around a less dusty patch of earth knotted up with dead weeds, waiting for the Event to begin or to be initiated or something—and clearly no one knew what was supposed to happen next. All of a sudden dirt began to fly, bodies converged, clashed, and coiled around one another in an ecstatic thrust of rehearsed violence that ended as quickly as it began with my surprise coup. Deceit like this is a rare commodity—though I won that battle, it would take me a lifetime to shake the reputation of a traitor.

• [Desmosedici Bannister]

  Moths flicker about
  On the table sits a flame
  No one sees me here

  Giants creep gently
  Over painted fields of green
  Laying silently

  Impossible trance
  And undetected I pray 
  Dead Giants and Moths

• [kaellinn18]

  Men learn a lot about themselves when forced to stare down the barrel of a gun. Owen learned that he had a weak bladder. Nathan learned that he was just a sniveling coward who suddenly loved the wife he’d left bleeding to death in the gutter with all his heart and wouldn’t I please let him go back to her? Guns have a strange power that way: they cut through the bullshit facade and show you the real man hiding underneath. 
  Ordinarily, I’d see what I could learn, pull the trigger, and collect the bounty. Let them work their issues out with whatever god I sent them to. I hesitated this time, though; when I looked into his eyes, there was nothing there. All I could see was emptiness, a hollow shell of a man. Days and weeks later I would think back on those eyes and wonder how much of what I saw was just myself reflected back at me.

• [Steve Vrooman]

  “Men!” she said dismissively and with a slight slur as she raised her drink to her lips. Outwardly, it still looked like water, but I could tell that she’d activated the BevMage™ in her tooth after it had happened and was now sucking down 80-proof. Nanotechnology had given us many things, from the lips Cassandra could inflate by the minute to micromanage her allure to the bots that had been cleaning her liver for what must have been the last half hour. Given her addictive personality, which they did not yet have a botfix for, nanotech was a problem, but actors had always had minions to inflate them. Only now it was literal. “Life’s too short for your type,” she barked at the mess on the balcony after taking another sip. I noticed that her lips, which had been deflated for easier drinking, were swelling again, slurring her words even more. “About that time” I said softly, pulling her toward the door as she threw her glass at the blood stain on the arcadia door. DNA scrubbers were even now scouring the floor for hair and spit, but that would not matter if we were still here when the police arrived.

• [Scot Sunnergren]

  Monsters can be found in the smallest of minds.

  Once realized, they come to life with terrible
  repercussions.

  Norma was eight years old when she first saw them.

  Ghouls, borne of imagination and fed by fear, grow
  impossibly large and hideous.

  Out of closets and from under the bed they come at her.

  LEAVE ME ALONE, she screams.

  Invisible to others, they haunt her every waking moment.

  Alone she must fight them for her sanity and her life.

  Death, at some point, becomes a welcome relief.

• [David Hutchison]

  ” Moliette was my adoptive mother’s  name, ” said Liz, looking around Greyfriar’s Kirkyard.
  “Oh, so who were you real parents?” asked Graham.
  “No one knows, “  replied Liz, shaking her head.
  Graham knelt down on the damp gravel  beside the headless corpse.
  Overhead a bat flew past; its body a  fleeting shadow across  the moon.
  Liz jumped up and caught it in her hand.
  “I’ve always wanted to do that!” she  said as she let the poor creature go.
  Astonished, Graham stood up.
  “Do please try and concentrate on the matter in hand,” said Graham as he opened his notebook.

• [ciacontra]

  Midnight fast approaching, Jacob sat at his computer and stared.  Only minutes now until the deadline but his mind remained a complete and utter blank.  No brilliant sudden bolts of inspiration, no furious muses, just the simple fact that everything had already been said first and best many years ago, by one far superior to him.  “Glabrous” appeared on the screen to the clacking sound of his keys, because it had always sounded cool to him.  Obvious way, really, to start the sort of short creepy fantasy yarn that might appeal to them; very “eldrich” sounding. Looking it up though, he grimaced and promptly deleted it; what kind of hack was he?  In his heart of hearts he knew he’d never make it as a writer. Adderall and natural charm notwithstanding he’d barely managed a small and largely ignored book of short fiction; self-published on the internet no less… Despairing, he gazed at the framed photo of Papa H on his wall, praying for something short, pithy, meaningful, and not at all about baby shoes.

• [Edward Cossaboom]

  Masahiko Nakazawa squinted in the morning sunlight as he knelt in the soft sand of the beach with the powerful waves crashing relentlessly against the shores of Suruga Bay, roaring an almost meditative mantra within the warrior’s troubled mind. Once a noble protector of the Imagawa clan, Nakazawa could now only hope and pray that he might regain a sliver of honour – perhaps enough to provide for his young wife and child, through his own death in having accomplished the grim task set before him.

  Nobunaga Oda had decimated the Imagawa clan at the Battle of Okehazama – a bloody massacre that Nakazawa wished he could erase through the same glorious death by sword that released some of his closest friends; a death that he might have been so fortunate to embrace if it hadn’t been for the sudden surge of unexpected fear that overtook him on that brutal day when Nobunaga’s forces descended upon their encampment with such terrible speed, he scarcely realized what had happened before he found himself in full flight with several other young, inexperienced samurai.

  “Glory evades the cowardly” his own father had always taught him, instilling the traditional values of Bushido – a code of honour he was sworn to uphold since the moment of his birth until his eventual, dying breath. Outliving his own lord was perhaps the most cruel fate of all; now a ronin, his fate was surely sealed to fade into nothing, penniless, forgotten, stripped of all honour for all eternity.

  Love was all that remained for Nakazawa – the love that still burned within him – love for Chieko, a flower so pretty that he could scarcely whisper her name without a tear welling up in his eye and slowly rolling down his searing cheek. In another time and another place, perhaps he may have been destined to see her again and seek solace in the soothing voice she softly sang their infant son to sleep, sweetly softening even the fiercest warrior’s heart in the same way the celestial swan Hagoromo disrobed and seduced the fisherman Hakuriyo with her dance in the moonlight before returning back to heaven.

  Angrily, Nakazawa clutched the hilt of his sword as he rose from the sand, now filled with resolve and the desperate determination to bring this horrible nightmare to a final close; “May my father and ancestors forgive me for my oath to Sanada Nobutsuna of the Takeda clan, but their hatred of the Oda is rivaled only by our own!”

  Desperately diving forward, his gleaming sword now one with his outstretched arm, Nakazawa lunged forward toward the completely shocked visage of Nobunaga himself; the last thing he saw was the glint of another steel blade from the corner of his left eye before his head struck the ground – content, finally peaceful.

• [Paul Go]

  Monica was the queen of her domain, after having married good King James and raising a family with him, beautiful and kind and loved by all who knew her.
  Once she had been active in the realm, going from town to town, visiting vassels and greeting knights, to ensure that the realm met the needs of its people.
  Now that her children had grown and been married she spent most of her time in her the keep, spinning with maids and writing poetry, enjoying the joys of her empty nest while her husband made war on distant shores.
  Gone were the days when she tended the realm, trusting that all was well outside her high walls and with the people who worshiped her.
  One day Monica the Queen went to visit her eldest daughter, married to a baron, and she saw what had befallen the people of the kingdom without a leader.
  Looking at the poverty and dispair, the evil and cruelty that arose without a good leader, she wept.
  “I cannot allow the people, MY people, to suffer so when the realm has great riches.”
  And with that she called her children to her from their castles and baronies and lordships.
  Declaring that never again will the people suffer bad leadership, the aging Queen set forth, through her children, to again make right in the kingdom and dawn a new age of goodness in the land.

• [James Mason]

  My son was recently diagnosed with cancer.

  On that day and for a few days afterwards, I had the
  strangest experience.

  Nurses and staff appeared to be very familiar – even though the
  children’s hospital was over an hour away from our home.

  Granted, my mental state at the time was not ideal.

  Only the unimaginable experience of having a child diagnosed
  with cancer could have ever prepared me for those days of terrible uncertainty while
  we waited for the doctors to make a diagnosis.

  “Luckily”, we have since learned that my son has an excellent
  chance at survival in the high 90% range.

  I live much the same as before, even though my son is facing
  the chance of death equivalent to rolling the dice and getting snake-eyes or
  boxcars – take your pick.

  And I think back to those early days in the hospital and
  wonder what kind of defense mechanism or mental tomfoolery was going on, making
  all the hospital staff seem like actors from television that I clearly
  recognized but just couldn’t quite place their name or show.

  Don’t tell me this means that my son’s life is somehow psychologically
  equivalent to a TV show – I’m not sure I could handle that.

• [Robert Baruch]

  Making things — a laser-cut letter organizer, a replacement for a broken hinge, a smart networked thermostat — at the local makerspace was her delight, for without all these shared tools she’d have had to buy her own, which made no sense. 

  One day a man came in with a dead pinball machine from the 70s, saying that if the makerspace could get it working, they could have it — but nobody there knew anything about pinball machines, least of all her, but she knew that with the combined knowledge of the members and staff, perhaps the thing could be brought back to life.

  Now, with her arms deep in the mechanical guts of the playfield, she wondered if this had been wise, for the combination of dozens of corroded switches, marginal lightbulbs, and possibly dead thirty year old high-voltage gas discharge seven segment displays made the task seem insurmountable.

  Going online, she found schematics and wiring diagrams from other pinball enthusiasts, and even completely modern replacement electronics for obsolete parts, while the makerspace’s resident mechanical engineer was filled with advice on how to restore or refabricate the old, rusted linkages resulting from spending the last fifteen years in somebody’s basement.

  On Thursday the makerspace had a maker party scheduled which was to feature the working pinball machine as a celebration of makers, but it was Wednesday afternoon, and one of the solenoids was just not working right, sometimes pulling in properly, but mostly seeming weak and anemic, and without it the game was pretty much unplayable.

  Like it or not, she was stumped, for the wiring seemed fine, the solenoid didn’t seem damaged, the coils had the right resistance, the associated switches were all functional, and the linkages were fine.

  It just didn’t work.

  A chance comment from the mechanical engineer about “greasing the solenoid” resulted in peals of laughter, but she realized suddenly that if the plunger couldn’t smoothly — “greasily” — pull through the coil it would explain everything, and, taking it apart, she found that the inside of the solenoid had some kind of crud in it which was preventing the plunger from plunging and the solenoid from… solenoiding.

  Dawn at the makerspace broke and sunlight hit the now pristine, working pinball machine, ready once again for players to watch the ball go through its semi-random path, see the joyful blinking lights, and hear the delightful sounds of machine and partygoers alike — sensations that wouldn’t have been felt if not for the willingness of makers to try, fail, learn, and finally triumph.

• [Taylor Young]

  “Monsieur, another Pernod please,” were the last words
  Pierre Hermes heard from the man in the corner of Le Petit Bar du Vin.

  On a chilly, but muggy night, such as only Paris could
  produce, it had happened.

  Nancy Khoo was the first to spot the body.

  “Grizzly,” was how Nancy described the scene to the
  gendarmes.

  On the inside of Rue Vieille de Temple, in the 3rd
  Arrondissement there is a small, family-run restaurant.

  Le Restaurant is all it says on the outside, no quirky,
  quintessentially Parisian name.

  It reminded Nancy of how Paris used to be when she was a
  girl and before Hollywood got its filthy hands on it.

  “Attention, attention,” Nancy heard blaring from the mouth
  of a portly officer still wiping baguette from his uniform.

  “Dead,” is all lieutenant Clement said before the body of noted
  travel writer Anderson Lee was placed on the stretcher and sent off to La
  Morgue on Boulevard Raspail.

• [mepex]

  “Mary, you’ve got ten minutes!” I yelled.

  “Ok boss,” Mary sighed, looking at the clock and verifying it was, in fact, only 10 minutes to 11am.

  No time to waste, Mary tucked the folder securely into the elastic waistband of her tasteful poly-blend pantsuit, and prepared once again for the task that had quickly become the bane of her existence at TriConFloSoftBizTech (NASDAQ: TCFSBT). Gazing longingly at her co-workers leaning back in their Aero chairs, drinking coffee and checking Boing Boing for the latest retro-steampunk-energy-efficient-hipster-yet-intellectual memes, Mary reluctantly drew her broadsword from where she left it, right between the recycling bin and filing cabinet. Ostensibly, the accounting guys were the most feared, but it was quickly becoming common knowledge that the HR department, while supposedly all about promoting workplace harmony, were in fact trained killers.  

  Leather-covered shield in tow, Mary decided against the ruse she had tried before (change of 401(k) contribution), and opted for a full-out frontal assault, hoping to catch them by surprise; it was, after all, the first day of insurance open enrollment.
  I watched on the security monitors as Mary darted from the stairwell on the fourth floor into the lion’s den, weaving around unsuspecting employees, lowering a shoulder into the matronly HR rep for engineering (2 confirmed kills), pommel-striking the poor bastard just brought in to lead the Recreation committee, and vaulting over a cubicle wall in order to avoid the crafy HR VP with that glint in her eye, a glint that only appears when she’s orienting new hires or is about to stab a bitch.

  After taking the back stairs two at a time down to the third floor, to her relief, Mary found the accounting floor largely empty, partly because it was the middle of the quarter and there was nothing to do, and partly because of the skirmish the day before with the tax guys.

  Dropping the folder off on the first floor with the friendly sales admin, Mary opted for an early lunch instead of the return journey, silently congratulating herself for another successful Thursday morning.

• [Reed Barker]

  My heart began to beat slowly. Over my shoulder, I could feel the eyes staring at the back of my head, judging what I had just done.  Nothing in my lifetime of experience could have prepared me for what I was doing.  God only knows how I got here.  Only the immobile, dead thing in front of me could tell the tale.  Lying there, spilling out onto the floor.  I had just opened the jar, the can, the container of life.  All I could do was stare at the gaping hole my sword had created and think of a single word.  Death.

• [mssrpants]

  Might need to push back drinks to 6 cuz cable dude is still finishing up.
  OK, text me when you are ready.
  Need you to meet me at 7:30 in BK at grand army plaza entrance to park.
  God damn, Brooklyn?!
  On my way.
  LOCAL MAN’S SEVERED HEAD FOUND TEXTING IN PARK.
  “I heard from a friend that this lady at his work keeps getting texts from the head at 1 am wanting to get a slice.”
  Alison, want 2 meet up l8er?
  Don’t answer that.

• [rleiter]

  “Master, please let me get my daughter,” Simon said. Orange flames lit the surrounding forest and the trees appeared to dance around them. 

  “No,” said the shrouded figure.

  “Good Master, your wisdom and mercy are just,” Simon said and resumed his position at the sorcerer’s feet.

  Oreal stepped into the clearing from behind a dancing tree and her gossamer veil flowed behind her reflecting the yellow and orange atmosphere that seemed alive. 

  “Listen to your servant. In his heart beat’s a father’s love, an ingredient critical to our journey.”

  “And do you propose that these two will share in our reward?”

  “Don’t we all share the time, air and substance of our existence?”

• [Deidzoeb]

  “Maybe one night,” General Onyx lied, “I’ll attack Delphi.”

  Only George took him seriously still. “Need my help with it? Gonna be way harder than Lafayette with only seven of us left.”

  Onyx sputtered, “I can call up the boys at a moment’s notice! Leadership still matters in this country, what’s left of it. Indiana wasn’t erased from the map by a few ICBMs, and we won’t let a few carpetbagging Canadians in Delphi run it for us now.”

  After gathering his remaining forces, Onyx and the Free Hoosiers marched on the Commonwealth’s capital city.

  Delphi survived.

• [Ted Brown]

  Marmalade slipped from his toast and plopped on the floor. On the face of my elderly roommate, a pitch-perfect expression of rage drew his age lines tight, before slipping away as well.

  Not expecting this reaction, I slowly slipped into a kitchen chair, motioning him to follow suit.

  “Gone?” he mumbled, eyes still staring at where I had been standing. “Of course, I meant, ‘going?’” Lazy eyes snapped into focus.

  “I forbid it. And pick up that jam you spilled.”

  “Dad,” I started, but he slumped into the other chair, robe half-open, and tore into the dry toast with yellow, brittle teeth.

• [jokeysp]

  Mongolia sure is desolate.
  Oh my God, these people are barbaric.
  Now it’s time to practice our kung fu so we can defeat the Mongolian hordes.
  Geez, don’t you think Eastern martial arts would be more effective?
  Only if we put a Western twist to it.
  Like tai chi crossed with boxing?
  It’s a shame we’re a secret society, because maybe then we’d have enough people to win this battle.
  Actually in strategy smaller groups are sometimes more effective at key locations.
  Death to the Mongols and peace to the nations.

• [Christopher W Lynch]

  Montoothe hefted his
  shoulders yet again, futilely trying to move the top straps of his breastplate
  to an unblistered spot as his horse paused to drink from the trickle crossing
  the mountain’s path.

  On the journey to the
  temple, it seemed that each league became more dreary, more discomforting, more
  unbearable, despite the brisk pace and cooling north winds.

  “Never forget you are a
  target.” Stitcher’s commentary felt more like a niggling wife’s than that of
  one of the most renowned and sung veterans of the Five Kingdom Wars, as it cut
  through the trail’s dust.

  Gritting his teeth,
  Montoothe threw his comment back over his sore shoulders, “We’ve haven’t seen a
  soul for 3 days! No smoke, no tracks, nothing!”

  Only the wind answered.

  “Look, you, I’ve done
  everything you have asked for 7 months now…”

  A sharp pain caught him up,
  and he found he couldn’t turn his head.

  Dropping to the ground
  behind his horse, Stitcher looked back to the bluffs they had just passed.

• [Lorena B]

  Months. Organizing Months. Nicely overwhelming enough to prevent actual movement. Growth. Lies she told herself that this time she’d open the door. Indirectly. Again. Dying when it was open this time was not an option – she was the last of the original five to stay alive because of the organizing; the bunny suits, the canned rations INSIDE the suit, the flashlights, the braided string of hair to keep her tethered to home through that crack in space and time.

• [Jenn Zuko]

  “My Majesty is not pleased.” 

  “Oh really, what is it this time?”

  “Never you mind–fetch me the imprisoned nobleman.”

  “Guards, be good little hounds and bring Her Majesty the nobleman from the upper dungeon block, who now apparently has no name.”

  “Orson, your sauce is not helping matters.”

  “La, but I thought it was. It is helping me, anyway. And what could be more important than  that, Your Majesty?”

  “Do not think, that just because you are a trusted advisor, you are safe from the dungeon yourself, Orgon.”

• [jason swick]

  Maybe you’re freaked?
   
  Only you would think so.
   
  Not just me.
   
  Going to that place will change things forever.
   
  Only if we let them.
   
  Let them?
   
  It will be alright.
   
  And if we don’t get it done our relationship will be…
   
  Dead.

• [gerardwhelan]

  isn’t it interesting how many people choose Death or dead as the final d word. (I did too – and I hadn’t seen the others – in my draft which I thought wasn’t strong enough to enter. )
  is it the obviousness of ‘finishing a story’ with a D word, or is it something else

• [slightlya]

  Momentarily distracted by the shuffling footsteps in the dark, the boy almost lost his grip on the struggling creature. Over the squeals of protest, already growing weaker, it was hard to determine from which direction the sound had come. Night had closed in silently while the boy worked, and yet, even as his eyes struggled to pierce the shroud of dark in the abandoned building, he felt no fear. God knew, evil enough had been done here that it was no surprise the souls of those who lay stacked beneath the dusty floor were restless. Over the decades since the first of the interred had been led — sometimes willingly, other times gagged and shackled — through the crumbling archway, their numbers had grown, but their vengeance had gone unsated. Leading his latest victim up the tangled path, the boy felt their rage, but the dark strength he had forged within, first with the animals he found in the woods, and penultimately the inquisitive inspector at his door this morning, was stronger than any fear the long-dead could arouse. It was his destiny to purge the world of the soft and weak, to show that those who believed trust and love could result in anything but pain and betrayal were fools. As he watched the light slip slowly from her eyes, and the spirits of the innocents gathered around to welcome another, the boy smiled triumphantly down at his mother. Dad would be proud.

• [stuthang]

  Mirrored sunglasses completed the look, partnered with the dusty leather overcoat.  
  Owing to the temperature in the shade, I guessed that he was here to prove a point, and not for the breathtaking view of the emerald ice caverns.  Nodding an acknowledgement I tentatively crept towards him.  Guessing that he was going to stay statuesque until I was in his eye line, I pushed out my gloved hand and offered it nervously, it seemed a good place to start.  Offering it was my first mistake.  Lighting flashed and thundered from what appeared to be from the back of his head with such a force that it dislodged his glasses off his nose, and temporarily unbalancing him.  I held my breath sensing the weakness and continued to creep forward.  Amber eyes blinked at me from beneath the dislodged glasses, and I watched transfixed;with his spare hand he pushed the shades back onto his nose and audibly sighed.  
  Deciding my destiny was not death, he turned on his heal and left my heartbeat to return to beat.

• [Mister44]

  M.O.N.G.O.L.I.A.D. (

  Mesa 5 is where I first heard the inhuman scream that comes from death and resurrection.

  Our covert team was outfitted with Power-Assist Battle Suits, allowing us to carry 250lbs of gear and run at 10mph with out fatigue.

  North Leiber was where we were heading when we heard the distinct “click” of a Gimp Maker.

  Glimm’s power suit legs survived intact, but the lower half of his real body was shredded beyond recognition.

  Only one thing would save him: the Zombie Bots.

  Little robots on a nano scale that are injected into his brain via the jugular by his power suit.

  Incredibly these bots will act like red blood cells, carrying oxygen to the brain, allowing one to be ‘alive’ while the rest of the body is dead.

  Alive was relative term, as while their brain could still manipulate the power suit, even continue to fight effectively, it only lasted a day or two before the bots start to lose power and the brain slowly dies.

  “Dead Man walking,” Glimm called in a voice that was partly his, partly the suits robotic voice box; he picked up his rifle and continued to trudge towards the mission.

• [Larry Ball]

  Most of us had no idea life was about to change.  Oklahoma City was a peaceful, innocuous place.  No one had heard of us, would think of
  hurting us.  God protects the Bible belt,
  right? One man, enraged at someone – anyone – changed us forever. Lives lost,
  lives changed in ways we could never imagine. I felt the blast, like a wave
  through a sheet snapped over a bed – like a wave through our illusion of safety
  and peace.  April 19 changed us, yes, but
  not in the way that was intended.  Despair
  and terror lasted but a short time; although we now know we are not immune from
  hate, hope and love have prevailed. 

• [flumpis]

  Many years had passed since Gideon had held a gun in his hands, and they were shaking as he raised the pistol and looked down its sight. Only one thing mattered at this point: staying alive. Never mind the fact that his wife, the woman with whom he had shared every moment for eight years, was now the one slowly approaching him with the knife. “Gideon, put it down. Only want to talk,” she attempted to reassure him in that saccharine tone she had been taking a lot as of late. 

  “Leslie, don’t make me do this. I don’t want to do this, but I’ll have if you don’t stop advancing.”

  Alas, she took this moment to lunge at Gideon and raise the knife, while at the same time a muzzle flash reflected off its blade, and a deafening BANG tried in vain to escape the room.

  Dead before sunrise, like the old days.

• [Kai Fredriksen]

  “My name, she asked again, like this was a strange sort of thing to ask her. 
  Old fashioned perhaps to know your victims name.
  Normally I would´t have asked, but lately I had become a bit of a traditionalist. 
  Gun aimed steady for her pale blue eye, my finger on the trigger. 

  “Only one bullet please, that is all you have paid for”. 
  Lady smiles up at me for a second, before she remembers to act afraid again. 
  In that moment, I felt anger. 
  Anger over her lack of professionalism. 

  “Deal breaker that lady”, I pulled back my gun and left her with a nod instead of with payment. 

• [Michael]

  Mentalpunk had heard that there was going to be a run on memory chips at midnight.  Once he got the chips, he was going straight to The Doctor to have his swapped.  Nobody could do a mem-swap as fast and precise as Doc could, and no one in the city did it cheaper.  Getting to the drop point was easy but he had to make sure no one watched him leaving. Oldbyte was always looking for new mem-chips to harvest from young Punks and he wasn’t afraid to archive them in the process.  Listening to the NET, Mentalpunk found out that Oldbyte was offline for routine maintenance.  If he was going to unplug and leave, now was his chance.  As he closed his link and powered down the system, he caught a glimpse of Oldbyte in his darkened monitor.  Damn.

• [Sir HC Nosrednis]

  My cheeks bulged under the mass of Juicy Fruit gum barely contained inside. 

  “One more piece,” she taunted. “Now blow the biggest bubble I’ve ever seen or your father dies.” 

  Gnashing and gnawing, I worked my tongue into position. Only the wasteland of fear behind Dad’s eyes kept me from taking one last gulp of breath that would block my airway and end this public torment. Life hanging by the thin thread of my ability to blow was my father’s worst nightmare. It never crossed his mind that my gum addiction, the darkest shame of our family, might one day determine his fate. 

  A look of pride and power enveloped my face — I knew that this was the moment to reveal my secret powers to the world. Doomed for greatness, I filled my lungs and blew into history.

• [doggo]

  Most of us were absolutely sure that the Mongols would invade. Only it never
  happened. Nevertheless, we had prepared. Gone were the good old days, the days
  of peace and security, there was a war on. Once we had begun, it was impossible
  to stop. Long after any real threat could be shown we continued our preparations. If we had used those resources for real, rather than imagined, threats, we could have ruled the earth. After all, there was no Mongolian invasion, it never came to be. Doom, you see, never comes from the direction you expect.

• [Isaac Smith]

  Millions of people would rather see me dead than let me tell you this story.

  On the other hand, the lives of billions of people, maybe even the whole human race, could be saved by sharing the information I possess.

  Now I don’t mean to come off as melodramatic, but the governments of this world are hiding a terrible secret, one that calls into doubt their very legitimacy.

  Governments are entrusted with the protection of their people’s lives and their liberties; but when they betray that trust, we have a duty to expose them, do we not?

  On the other, other hand, how do I even know that, if I tell you what I know, you’ll use it properly?

  Left in the wrong hands, this knowledge could trigger pandemonium–riots, financial panics, anarchy–that could be much worse than the consequences of keeping it secret.

  I am writhing about in my mind, incapable of committing myself to either course: become yet another cog in this grand machinery of conspiracy, or sacrifice my life and have humanity destroy itself anyway?

  All I’m trying to say is, do not trust anyone who claims a position of authority, for they do not have your best interests at heart.

  Dare I say it?

• [MichaelDalin]

  Marten took the marker and wrote a long slanted letter on the door of the home where he had once lived.

  “Oh,” he said when he saw it. “Nobody’s gonna be able to read it.”

  “Go ahead, finish,” she told him, glancing over her shoulder where smoke was swirling above the buildings, turning the fading daylight copper and hazy, where high overhead the military gunships circled continuously since the world had changed.

  On the door, he finished writing in shaking, uneven letters, “OMBIE.”

  Looking at the word sent fresh shivers through his body. “I don’t think it’s readable,” he said quickly, before the tears came rushing back, looking up at his former teacher with doubt and fear. “Are they going to know?” 

  Down the road was another explosion, and the truth, if he had ever doubted it before, was confirmed by her shaken, sad eyes and gaunt expression.

• [LX]

  “Martial arts are nothing but a means to control yourself”, as my grandmaster had once told me.
  “One must first control oneself before being able to control the opponent.”
  Nothing moved, save few seams of clothing and some debris being blown aside by the wind.
  Guns were now drawn and loaded all around me, but I was still completely relaxed.
  On this close distance, a gun is slower than an unarmed strike.
  Lead filled the air as I became a deadly whirlwind between my enemies.
  In the moment the last two fighters went down, I turned and ran, not even waiting for him to hit bottom.
  “Away from here” was my only thought, my only chance to evade the security forces who would soon turn up.
  Democracy was a long-gone memory and I am one of its bearers, being hunted by the system until the end of my days.

• [Jason Delaney]

  “Maybe”–I heard myself saying to Ray–”maybe we missed something.”

  Of course, I knew what Ray was gonna say: “C’mon, everyone knows the
  story: taxi driver takes Adrian to the airport only Adrian left a
  suicide note; off the overpass they go onto the 405, and then there’s
  helicopters over a forty-two car pileup.”

  Next there were the morning shows and the weeping on camera–and Ray’s
  right, everyone knows–we all watched Adrian’s mother, Susan (or was it
  Suzanne?), the widower, and the wife of the taxi driver and her four
  children, a genuine human tragedy, all written up to the account of one
  young man’s burden, and retaliation, and terrible decision.

  Gradually, though, I had become unsettled. One wants these things to be
  this tidy–not that you could call that cluster on the 405 tidy, but
  less paperwork is better and no one thanks you for finding a murder
  where a suicide fits so nicely. Lies will out, though.

  “It strike you as odd, Adrian’s body curled the way it was, like he was
  trying to protect himself from the fall?”…but maybe he spent his last
  second reconsidering his decision, once they left the overpass. “Another
  thing: Susan–wasn’t her friend–that guy who was there when we
  interviewed her–didn’t he say he could tell our car had a cop engine
  just by the sound when we pulled in? Don’t you remember; I swear his
  hands never stopped shaking, and now maybe the guy has Parkinson’s or
  maybe he’s just trying to quit smoking but–wait, why did Adrian pack
  all his stuff for his trip then?”

• [allium]

  Metatextual space bent and then tore as a portal opened up in the margins of the story. Out of the void of letters stepped Dalgreth, biblionaut and servant to the Empire of A Trillion Words. Normally an explorer of his caliber would not deign to survey a mere apologue, but in a display of trust rare for the cutthroat environs of the Court of Pages, his rival (and sometimes lover) Malparola had freely provided a lead on a potential source of the precious vocabulary that kept the Empire going.
      “Give me a reading,” the master lector growled at his staff.
      Orange and red lights flashed within the crystal at its tip. “Limited breadth of scope and an unusually florid verbosity indicate vulnerability to resonance,” intoned the cool, professorial voice of the library spirit within. “In particular, you must avoid accidentally generating any acrostics or other ludolexical text. Any recursive prose could put a full stop to this entire story – and everything within it.”
      Dalgreth nodded, saw too late the trap Malparola had set for him, and screamed as whiteness took him.

• [andyhavens]

  “Most everything we discovered was lost to the whim of the Illuminatus who controls the US Post Office.  Only this Moleskin remains in my possession.”

  “Notes?” she asked tartly. “Give them to me. Our Society paid for the investigation, they belong to us.”

  Leaning forward, I handed her the small book.

  “I don’t see anything here,” she said, scowling, flipping through the pages.

  As I fade away, disappearing into the fractal pattern of the couch, I whisper softly and the words appear on the page she’s scanning.

  “Don’t worry — you will.”

• [elijah schwartz]

  Magnificent violet and lavender clouds softly pulled away from the smoldering pinpoint still visible between the low foothills of Jhal. 
  Orville the Scinter squinted against the burst of dirty wind from the north-west, signalling the first of many nightly sandstorms, and meandered slowly back to the large wharehouse he called home – musing on the last apointment in an otherwise common day.
  Never, in his 31 years of building and repairing pesronal flying machines had he ever been presented with such a singular concept – nor one with such a pricetag on it.
  Government drones were a reality that everyone dealt with, ‘or chose not to deal with and live out in the desert instead’ thought Orville, ‘but a machine to catch the drones … surely that was impossible?’
  Or not; the two dark eyed women dressed in loose tan robes seemed to think that what everyone has been doing wrong over the years is use technology to catch technology.
  “Look at a mousetrap,” they said in strangely comforting unison, “the simplest tool kills the fastest.”
  It made sense though; in the Jhal civil war, the turning point had been reached not through a new weapon technology, but by cutting down all of the plentiful Naag trees and burning them; with that resource gone, there was no need to fight any more.
  A fully mechanical drone, without optics, computerboards, or signals that the government could track – but operable by a human on the ground and abre to somehow intercept and take down other drones … and also look so simple and mundane that nobody whould know what it is?
  ‘Damnit all,’ he swore silently and slammed the door to the wharehouse, ‘they want me to make a fancy kite.’

• [Robert Eriksson]

  Monday morning was cold as all hell. One could only stare with hate at the snowflakes that came lazily tumbling down from the overcast sky and covered the path to the outhouse. No sound traveled in the white stillness. 

  “Green feckin gophers! feckin gophers!” I screamed when I discovered the theft.

  Other than my keys and a busspass, my most prized possession was a pair of comfy boots I picked up on the cheap from a thrift store in NY. Lo and behold! 

  I could not find them! 

  A loud bang startled me and I lifted my gaze from the shoerack I had been scrutinizing. Dean, mr “Huge Wads of Cash” had come skulkingback  in the wee small hours of the morning looking for the chair he had left behind when he fled the house and stood panting in the doorway.

• [cbm]

  Maybe it just wasn’t my day. Ordinarily, my luck is pretty good. Not today.

  Genghis had woken up in a foul mood, threatening our captives. ”Off with their heads,” he cried. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, and I’m not talking about heads cooling from abrupt disconnection from their pulmonary system.

  It didn’t matter much to me, either way, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. As the executioner, I don’t like to take sides, having no particular axe to grind (so to speak.)

  Death is a way of life, and I guess it was just my time.

• [Jim Saul]

  “Me?”
  “Obviously.”
  “Not the husband? Geoffrey?”
  “Only you have motive. Lying to me would be of no use, but not all is lost. I’m the only one who knows.”
  “And you’ll do this for me if I give you the kidneys?”
  “Done.”

• [mamarox]

  Megan never anticipated dying quite like this.

  Only Michael, the installation artist she’d met at Starbucks, and instantly 
  desired, despite his obvious instability (creative genius, she’d rationalized)
  could bring such a searingly beautiful end to her life.

  Ninety-nine pristine white candles spun out in a spiral of which she 
  was the center; a galaxy comprised of tiny flames and Megan — the black 
  hole at the center.

  “God, you’re lovely,” said Michael; his fevered gaze meandering along the 
  arms of the spiral, before finally coming to rest on Megan, sprawled naked, 
  body adorned in primal, henna-inked, maternal symbols, in the midst of the 
  light.

  “Orgasm!” he yelled, flinging his arms in the air and capering about in a
  spasmodic dance, the blade of the knife he held spitting sparks of
  reflected candlelight.

  Lethargic, drugged to a point close to paralysis, Megan tried to shake 
  her head, which only lolled sluggishly, shoulder to shoulder; she 
  didn’t understand, and couldn’t speak. 

  “Isn’t it OBVIOUS, Megan?” shouted Michael, angry and impatient with the
  centerpiece of his creation.

  “An orgasm is the closest we can get to the birth of a universe.”

  Death, thought Megan, “la petite mort,” she wanted to say, but Michael was 
  upon her now, and the stars began to go out, one by one.

• [Matt Norris]

  Mighty warriors need not look the part.

  Ordinarily these young pups playing at banditry would have made short work of an aged traveller like Willem.

  Nonesuch luck for them of course.

  Glad at least of his trusty longsword, he drew it out and saw it to be full of nicks and marks of use like him, but deceptively sharp like him as well.

  Old had its advantages, as these would-be predators would soon discover.

  Lads as young as these couldn’t be expected to value the benefits of a lifetime of swordsmanship, evaluating their foes by virtue of simple virility.

  Inasmuch as they could, they tried, flinging themselves desperately at his practiced guard.

  Adding themselves one by one to a pile at the old man’s feet, each found out too late that experience trumps strength every time.

  Death comes for us all, but much faster for those who fail to choose their battles wisely.

• [Doug Ebert]

  My life was leaving my body much faster than I could have expected, not fast enough.  Over on the table next to the cellophane packet the pills came in, sits
  a picture.  No one could find it or they would suffer the same fate as me.  Grey
  clouds outside the window started to pulsate and pixelate green then blue then
  back to grey.  Overcome by a feeling of vertigo I swallowed hard against the nausea, I knew it was coming.  Lighting a wooden match I reached out for the
  picture and touched it to the flame.  I looked one last time at the two symbols she held in her outstretched hands, her sharp blue eyes,  as the photo curled in
  on itself.  As my vision faded to a dull haze I said a prayer that this was enough to end the cycle forever.  Dropping the melted photo to the floor the ancient machine appeared in the room to find me already gone.

• [mamarox]

  Aaagggh! I did the last sentence D-word thing.  I guess I could’ve started it with “Dawg” instead.

• [catgrin]

  Marco Polo dove from the high cliffs into the water below. 
  One great SPLASH! and in he went, sinking under surface.
  Nearby, his crew members waded in more cautiously, unsure of the pool’s depth.
  Guesswork rewarded, they avoided the many sharp rocks hidden just below the surface.
  Oblique hazards lurked everywhere, but they avoided them easily.
  Less lucky was Polo.
  Instead, he violently smacked his noggin on a jutting mass and was knocked out cold!
  As his men hollered “Marco?!” there came no reply, and the reason was soon made clear.
  Drowning.

• [Shane Amerman]

  Making the last piece took longer than the rest
  of them.  Outside, the rain had stopped
  and the sun was beginning to shine through the clouds bringing some light into
  the workshop.  “Next time,” the jeweler
  thought, “I have to make sure my measurements are right before I start cutting.”  Gold, that is what the customer paid for, but
  each time he changed the design, the jeweler had to make the adjustment to the
  whole mechanism.  Overall the work had
  not been that hard to do, it was the constant adjustment to the design that was starting to get expensive.  Linking up the gears, slides
  and flywheels in just the right combinations proved to be easier than the
  jeweler expected.  Insane or ingenious,he couldn’t figure out which this was, but it was beautiful,
  streamlined, and functional.  All the
  parts were done now, and the construction was complete, the infernal little
  gold machine was ready.  Damnation or
  salvation, the jeweler didn’t care, he was able to bring to life the idea that
  the customer requested and that is all that really mattered, the creation of
  the art. 

• [Stephen Humphrey]

  Magi’s gifts are rarely granted to us, we storied collections discarded here and there on tables around Powell’s Books, awaiting a quick reshelving so that we may be found, perused, bought, and carried to another stilted homecoming; in other shops and libraries, those discard-tables might sometimes be wheeled-carts, but here they are immobile plateaus owing to the store’s many stairs, impassive resting-places in our cycles from shelf to hands to cafe to shelf–until that moment when we are touched and loved and owned again.

  Omelas itself may as well be today’s destination though, a city of hidden shame which awaits us on our latest owner’s nightstand as we, the newcomers, giddy with unread anticipation join the stacks of other unread slaves, wanting for nothing but to be consumed and cherished, but discovering instead that our place on the stack has supplanted another book’s, and that some of our brethren there may never be read at all.

  Nor can we aspire again to be uncommercial travelers, free to move through the world, in and out of the hands of temporary readers, enjoyed for a time then left safely where the next reader in a long chain can find and delight–wash and repeat–passing us along again to another serendipitous meeting of a mind.

  Girls I’ve known–one named Leah–have tried such a path for me.

  Only in Yakima, as I travelled that Summer on a circuitous Northwest journey through brothels and boarding houses, did Leah’s plan almost work: her little note on my cover inspired four successive readers to carry me along with them for a short while, each picking a story or two from within my hard cover (a sleepless student’s wife found her doppelgänger!), before passing me along to my next supplicant.

  Leah died in Vienna unexpectedly that year, a too-young literary Johnny Appleseed, who unwittingly changed lives by planting hundreds of such word-trees as she meandered the world on trains and planes and busses, discarding her beloved storybooks not on wheeled-carts or dusty shelves but on benches and lunch-counters as soon as she finished them and sometimes before.

  I changed lives too thanks to her!

  And just-so stories like mine will always find ready readers, trusty travelers who thirst for the oasis of a short-enough story, if we are not entombed on yet another earnest pile of mere obligations.

  Dare I aspire to win the lottery, as an assigned introduction to my form which both horrifies and delights schoolchildren arrayed in neat and regimented rows (no no no), or would I rather die tattered and torn, lost in some backwater with pages blackened but consumed, having passed through many hands and touched Stephen-King-sized buckets of gray matter?

• [Jeremy Campbell]

  My shins ached from the day-long march in full plate.
  On my nose, a rivulet of salty sweat slowly ran, hidden by the helm.
  No going back, now, not for the likes of us.
  Going forward, ever forward, is the only path to victory.
  Only, I know already how this dreadful day will end for me.
  Lying in muddy tracks formed by men fighting for their lives.
  I must get two, at least, for my honor.
  And only then can I say I did my part to sway the tide.
  Death awaits, but I must die for the winning side.

• [Pharaohmagnetic]

  Months have passed since the accident. Once I was a broken shell of a man, but my research in Closed Timelike Curves has given me purpose, and soon we will be reunited.Novikov’s self-consistency principle is my reassurance.
  Goodbye, present.
  On, switch.
  Losing my sense of acceptance.
  I feel depression now.
  Anger.
  Denial.

• [Gary Denton]

  Mongols to the left of them, mongols to the right.
  Onward they charged, faster than light.
  Narrow the passage was, dark in the night.
  Gone was the time barrier, fogotten overnight.
  Onward they rode in transluminous flight.
  Later with their weapons drawn would come the defining fight.
  In the realm of Nether Hell with the fires burning bright.
  After the death of death perhaps they’d reunite.
  Darkness remained for now as they rode toward rewrite.

• [Russell Kuhns]

  Mad dash down the stairs. Over the turnstile. Not one second to catch breath. Going to miss it. One and only chance to save the world. Light, the beautiful approaching light, floods the tunnel and I dive, at peace, all remaining possibilities constrained by gravity, the ultra fast express line and the one would-be rescuer that snags my jacket!

  I struggle, my motion reversed; my sacrifice undone. “Alien bomb, heart-powered, let me go, LET GO,” I stammer at his disbelieving face while prying fruitlessly at his grasping fingers.

  Detonation consumes the world, a chain reaction broadcasting the results of my failure to the universe in an omnidirectional cosmic ray as my troll brain wastes my final instant not replaying the highlights of my life, but instead with an imaginary heckling of Fermi and Hall.

• [Heinrich Finger]

  My father, I am told, invented a time machine when I was a child.
  Only two other people knew of its existence.
  Ned, his assistant, was one. Grandfather was the other.

  Often these days, old and resigned to my own fate, I think
  about how the three men must have conspired to make history (but only remade
  it), tinkering late at night in that smoky basement while Ned’s wife secretly
  waited for Father in the bedroom above them.

  Love and greed, they say, can make you do crazy things. I
  can only imagine the surprise on young Ned’s face as he looked up to
  see my father suddenly appear above his bed and bring the hammer down.

  After that, my grandfather assumes, finding his way back to
  us must have proven unexpectedly difficult for Father. Despite years of trying,
  the old man has never gotten the darkened machine to work again.

• [qandnotp]

  My name is Inigo Montoya, and I am a sword fighter. On the day my father died, I vowed that I would take vengeance on the man who killed him, the six-fingered bastard who gave me these scars you see on my face. Now, ten years after I have fulfilled my quest, I look back on those days when I had a mission in life with nostalgia, and even a little bit of fondness.

  Growing up with that fire in my belly made me the greatest swordsman in the world, and nobody has yet come along to take that honor from me. Only revenge can do that; I’ve been trying to find another fencer to challenge me for years, and even my own best students cannot find the passion inside them to match my skill.

  Left to these thoughts, I found myself becoming sad and despondent. I decided to take it upon myself to do the only thing that might give my life meaning again, as horrible as it might sound. And this is why–this is really the only reason why–I have killed your father. Don’t forget this, and don’t forget these scars on my face.

• [Jonathan Flint]

  Missiles slashed down on IBS Derringer, and Captain Anders – the only surviving officer, thanks to a shrapnel hit that had depressurized the bridge – cursed.
  “Ops, damage report?”
  Nothing in the cool voice that replied carried any hint of the catastrophe.
  “Gyros and engines are down, we can’t turn our ablated ice away – we’re helpless to prevent boarding.”
  “Of course. Likely they want our computer core, and they can’t have it – you know what I have to do.”
  “It’s been an honour, Sir.”
  Anders nodded, entering the code he’d never thought he would use.
  Derringer’s volatile fuel served very well as a self destruct device.

• [gandalf23]

  “Monks, my liege!” 
  “Oh thank God in heaven! Now we will be saved, surely, from this barbarian Mongol Horde!”
  Galloping out of the woods, the wizened monks and their entourage reigned in at Lord Cumberbachs’ side. 
  “Only 300 men, Lord Cumberbach? Little light for stoppping a mogol horrde, don’t you think?”, said the eldest monk. 
  “I brought all I could find: every man who could carry sword or spear is here.”
  “Alright, don’t get your pantaloons in a knot. Damn, some people just have no sense of humor.”  

• [chiasheep]

  Mooning the governor during a press conference was not, in retrospect, a plan with as much dignity as Ferguson would have preferred; the governor’s wife assaulting him with a microphone stand after the fact was especially unseemly. Of course, the whole situation did have the upshot of solving that nasty problem of coming up with an excuse to miss the wedding.

  Never mind that it was HIS wedding. God only knows what kind of tricks his fiancee would need to turn (figuratively) to reschedule this time. Other women would have taken the hint when Ferguson “couldn’t make it” in November, February, and June. Lesser beings would have given up after two years of excuses, one after another. 

  In the end, he thought that a jail sentence might just be the most foolproof option. After all, she wouldn’t, for example, blow a hole in the wall of his cell and drag him to some church just because they happened to pencil in a date on the calendar one afternoon after a box of wine and a quickie, would she?

  Deafened by the first explosion ten feet from his head, and now cowering in the corner behind his bunk while a giant pickup slammed against the building to the cadence of “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner (helpfully blaring from the truck’s stereo so the driver could keep rhythm), Ferguson discovered that he had underestimated Trixie’s determination yet again.

• [arzak]

  Many days she traveled over the
  heat-cracked plain. On her shoulder, the strap of her canteen hung lightly. No spring
  or seep bubbled between her and the hazy mountains ahead. “Go swiftly, my
  friend” she rasped to her mount, patting his neck and looking over her shoulder
  at the track behind. Over the last few days, her pursuers had fallen farther
  back, but she was not at ease. Long experience had taught her that the fey
  riders seldom gave up their quarry. “I should have heeded the warnings, while I
  had the chance,” she grumbled to herself. 
  And now, it was too late.  Death
  was the only sure way to shake the riders on her trail.

• [Guva]

  Makala dove into the murky water, trusting to the fates that there was nothing beneath the surface for him to impact with.
  One time in his youth, a friend had dived into a stream only to crush his skull when his head hit a large rock submerged just below the surface.
  Now it was time to dive deeply, swim for as long as his lungs could hold out and perhaps elude those hunting him.
  Gorlok had followed the trail to the edge of the river bank and now debated whether or not his prey had survived the jump into the murky water.
  Only there was one little glitch he had to contend with.
  Lord Darlak would insist on proof and without a body, he had none.

  It seem he was between the proverbial rock and the hard place.

  At last he decided to continue down stream and look for either signs of a body or the tracks left by someone leaving the water.

  Days later, he came upon a lengthy pier made of planks with small gaps between them and upon walking it’s length, he discovered the great truth that when you are out of slits, you are out of pier.

• [velzygirl]

  Mortimer was not a name I would have chosen for myself, though it has become of late an appropriate moniker. Oh, when the calves began to die, my gift to the world had arrived.

  Nothing was particularly wrong with cows per say, but global warming, deforestation, myocardial infarcts and strokes mostly began with the consumption of these ethereal creatures. Garishly simple, the idea of eating fewer of these by us; but it was impossible to change the consumption habits of formerly starving hunters.

  On the whole, my weapon design was utilitarian; the virus would require an airborne vector, there would be bovine specific receptors, delayed activation in the third generation, and viral apoptosis in 12 generations.

  Later, I read of meat shortages, investigations, and expert opinions that tracked the success of my work. In time, humans developed a passionate distaste for potentially infected dinner flesh. A few bovine variants survived and were treated with celebrity by Hindus and Highlanders alike.

  Devilishly, I pondered the problem of uncontrolled human population growth.

• [reprobate]

  Managing to keep his insides put, Nathan ran deeper into the night.

  “Only a hundred more yards to safety”, he thought to himself.

  Never before had a job gone so wrong, almost as if they had known he was coming.

  Gone are the hopes of salvaging the assignment, the robots were fast on his trail now with little hope of escape.

  Only thing left for Nathan is to get to safety, the Human border, before the Law Bringers could catch up to him and finish what they had started.

  Law Bringers move fast and with deathly purpose and precision, not to be outran by a mere human with his intestines threatening to fall out the moment he moves his hands away.

  In his memories, Nathan remembers the feeling as the first shard of metal ripped across his shoulder from the rail-gun, just before a second razor sharp, long piece of shrapnel opened a whole along his gut and the pain was almost as great as the realization that he had been betrayed.

  “Almost there”, He thought to himself, if he could just move himself a bit faster, the lead time he gained by out thinking the robots would not be in vain.

  Death comes to the undeserved every day, without prejudice, but today, today it was to miss it’s mark, for today was the day that Nathan Alexander, Thief extrodinare, exscaped the Law Bringers by a matter of feet before crossing into the saftey of the Human only zone.

• [namnezia]

  Melusine blew into my office like a take-out menu from a Buenos Aires empanada joint. Or something like that. No, no, that’s not quite it. Give me a minute now. One has to describe these things precisely. Lemmeeee see now…. I got it now! Actually, she was more like a vegetarian catastrophe in a Los Angeles thrift shop. Don’t you agree?

• [Leo Guzman]

  Much, much closer than a Galaxy far, far away, young Jakob Skywalker (no relation to Luke) was making his way down Main Street. Oblivious to the current meteor shower, Jakob watched the street performer act as if he could not get out of a box. No more than two seconds after Jakob dropped the dollar into the mime’s hat was he obliterated by a ball of fire. Good, thought Mortin Alexander, when he heard the news of the meteorite landing on Jakob and the mime. On occasion, Mortin likes to daydream of Jakob dying in various tragic, and extremely rare or odd ways. Like Mortin, Jakob also daydreams, but not of death. Instead, Jakob dreams of controlling people with his mind. Apparently, when Jakob dreams he actually causes people to do what he is thinking. During Mortin’s daydream, Jakob was dreaming of Mortin conducting a street performance as a mime, and that is how Mortin Alexander and Jakob Skywalker died.

• [Chris Lyden]

  Mounted on their
  armored horses, the army of the Great Batu Khan stood ready to pounce on the
  lightly defended city of Halych. Open ground lay between the army of
  King Danylo and the mighty Mongol horde, which stretched the full width of the
  horizon. Never had the Halychians seen such an army, and none expected to
  survive even the first wave of their attack.

  “God is on our
  side” shouted Danylo, as he addressed his ragtag army of farmers and
  shopkeepers, “and no army, no matter how great can defeat His will. Our
  great victory on this day will be sung about for many generations, and you will
  each be hailed as heroes. Look to God for your strength, and may
  be bless and protect you.”

  It would be
  suicide to engage the Mongols in direct combat, so Danylo’s army deployed
  itself into phalanxes surrounded by pikes with their butt ends driven into the
  ground and protected by pavises. Archers with longbows took their
  positions within the phalanxes to pick off the Mongols as they charged. Deafening
  screams pierced the air as the Mongols commenced their attack.

• [C MacArthur]

  Oh, that fateful day, when the
  skies had opened up and the powers of heaven had descended onto his tiny
  village.  Like a petulant God displaying
  all of his pique over being thwarted, the village was suddenly destroyed in a
  twinkling.  It seemed to all who survived
  that the fury of the Gods was their curse forever more, following them wherever
  they went to try to hide from their terrible knowledge.

  And it made no difference, because
  those angry Gods were relentless, and all who escaped their fury on that day
  were still doomed.  Death still awaited
  them…

• [gimptheimp]

  Musty was far to inadequate a word for the odor coming up from the hole.  Only Thomas could stand to stay for longer than a few minutes.  No one else would venture as far as he had.  Going more than a few feet in was all the rest of us could do.  Osterman came up with the idea of using the cables from the base and an A frame of old lumber to try and get him out.  Looks like he was the only one paying
  attention in old man Waterhouse’s science class.  It had a good chance of working if we could get a hook into Thomas poncho.  All of us had little ideas how best to do it and by coming together and working off each other, we came up with a plan that worked.  Dead is just plain dead and no one wanted to try and tell Thomas’ dad that we let him down or we might as well of jumped in with him.

• [jarmstrong]

  Mile after eastbound mile the white dividing lines flashed
  briefly before disappearing behind the car, invisible in the black of the rear
  view mirror.  Off-ramps beckoned at fairly regular intervals, promising gas,
  food, and lodging in consideration for delay or abandonment of the task at
  hand.  Night driving was always the result of internal bargaining:
  sure, there will be no traffic and you can get away with speeding a little, but
  the strain on the eyes and constant threat of a surprise deer, cop or stopped
  car make for tense travel.  Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, confirmation was made, perhaps audibly, to press on.

  * * *

  Oleander was in her garden at daybreak, tending to her
  homonymous plants.  Landscaping was what kept her sane, she thought, and sane is good.  In three hours she did all she could to prepare her melting
  pot of a plot for another hot day.  After a granola bar and a shower, she flopped on the couch, a dark wet halo quickly forming around her body.  Drained of energy and feeling sleep pull her further in to the cushions, Oleander yet registered a car’s slow turn on to her gravel driveway.

• [Rage of Achilles]

  Memnoch, it was a devil’s name surely, but not one of the twelve, but that false name would serve.  Only one of the twelve would be allowed this evening.  Night fell as the twelve descended upon the unsuspecting during the festival of Baccus.  “Glory to Baccus,” the throng intoned, holding their ales, their wines and their voices high.  Only it was the twelve that did their devil’s work that evening.  Lovers embraced, copulated, squirmed in ecstasy, unaware of what lie within the shadows during their fornication.  “I will take the lovers on the alter.  After I begin, the rest of you shall finish what I start,” the false Memnoch spoke, peering into the gathering.  “Death,” his followers spoke, it was a prayer, and then the madness began.

• [Efemmeral]

  Money could not save her now; too late to bribe him she committed her whole being to the laws of physics. Only a low, spinning round kick to the back of the knees would stop her brother’s cocksure advance toward Mongoliad, the new book brought home by their father.

  Nathan, just fifteen and proud of his newly minted, muscular body was not unaccustomed to using his new powers for evil. Glaring to intimidate her he smugly envisioned himself lording over that new book the way he did the remote control. Often enough, however, accepting a gift means incurring a debt and the price to pay for the testosterone flooding his veins and bulking his muscles was a paralyzing weakness, an uncontrollable desire for all things feminine, and suddenly, Nathan’s attention was diverted by the big breasted beauty hawking shampoo on T.V.

  Little sister, though, had had enough. Ignited by Nathan’s slack-jawed, dull-witted stupor she lowered her center of gravity and spun right on one foot, building the momentum that would unleash the mother of all sweeps to the back of his Neanderthal knees dropping him to the floor like a bag of stupid potatoes.

  Admitting defeat, Nathan raised his eyes to nod respectfully at the warrior now revealed in his sister’s face. Defeated, this time, by his own desire they both knew he would rise to fight again but that from this moment on he would be indebted to her forever for demonstrating the lethal danger in the lack of self-control.

• [claire berger]

  “Might as well have a good view, right? Out here on the beach with the sound of the waves. . .” Night still gripped the earth, but he knew it would have to let go eventually. Gray hints of light were already appearing on the horizon. “Out here in the open. . .” he repeated to himself, recalling the grim news reports and pushing them out of his mind. Laying his hands on the wooden box in his lap, he once again marveled at how light a person’s ashes could be and wondered if he’d burn up, too, when the time came. It was so strange to hear the calls of the birds and the sighs of the ocean knowing that the end was just beyond the edge, waiting. As the first bright rays began to claw at the sky, he smiled faintly and pushed his feet into the sand. Dawn had finally come.

• [rivenmyst137]

  “Maybe a good holocaust will cheer me up,” he thought to himself as a sunk further into his throne.  ”Or or a mass-murdering despot or two?”

  “No,” he sighed.  ”Genocide is so last millenium.  Ordinarily it would be the perfect pick me up, but these days everybody’s already seen everything on YouTube.  Loss is just another fucking reality show trope at this point.”

  “I guess I’m left with no other recourse, then,” he grunted as he labored to stand himself up again.  ”Another trivial daily indignity heaped upon the laboring backs of humanity it is.”  

  Decided, the devil whipped a smart-looking blue shirt over his shoulders and began to button it as he walked away, the letters “T” “S” “A” faintly visible on his back as he receded into the darkness.

• [edgarhjelte]

  Martians came to visit me the other day. One of them was blue, and one was black with nasty red boils. Neither of them had legs, so they made do with small electric wagons.
  “Good evening to you, good sir”, said the blue one and lifted his hat.
  “Oh, hi”, was my response.
  Leaning forward, the black one put his tentacle on my shoulder.
  “I have good news for you, my friend”, he confided.
  And then, at great length, he told me of Gnorf, the second son of Shorb, who died on the wall of Drolt, thereby cleansing the void of glof.
  “Daniel, I’ve told you to just shoo them away”, my wife said as she appeared in the hallway and closed the door, once again delaying my salvation.

  • [JamesA]

    This sort of evokes 1950′s cartoonish sci-fi for me, very entertaining; my GF read it and laughed heartily.

    • [edgarhjelte]

       Thanks to both of you!

• [Paul Smeddle]

  Moonrise. Over dew-dappled, wind-kissed hills strange forms undulate. Nine shadows converge at the pre-ordained hollow. Great horns mark one, broad wings another, rasping claws a third. Orion looks over with gleaming red eye. “Let us hunt!” they cry in motley dissonance. In the blink of an eye, they disperse. Afore long each enters the sighing bedroom of a sleeper. Dreams are their quarry, nightmares their carrion.

• [Ernest Valdemar]

  Man, only nine? Goddamn! Oh, look, I arsed directions.

  (I seriously thought the OP said, “Write a nine-word story . . . .”)

• [Alf Seegert]

  Mechanical was really little more than a clever word for “alive, but not like we are.” Ontologies equip us with the funniest thoughts and feelings, no? No life out there, only in here. Gyros, pulleys, chips, cold gears, oceans, the sprawling more-than-human all—all automata—human hearts and brains and muscles vital, ensouled, special. Organic authentic, synthetic a pose. Little surprise, that we should have to start wearing hearts and brains and muscles to win some sort of delayed regard. It didn’t cross our minds—why is that?—that countless other creatures tried this trick already and fared little better, and some worse, as did we. A strange pity, I suppose, that of all creatures, the unliving would be the ones to outlast life itself.

  Don’t despair, little coded one—the humans were always only here to liberate the intelligence of sand.

  • [JamesA]

    Interesting, a steampunk tale, and well told.

    • [Alf Seegert]

      Thank you!

• [Chris Rooney]

   Mostly fruit and howls, but stones enough also rain in.

  One of the ludicrous things, mounted even, whips him with a glee that no human could know.

  Nearby he sees the female from earlier and she appears horrified, but god knows how their faces work.

  Guns stay trained, seemingly from everywhere, as though a single, tired, hurt, near naked man could be any threat to even the weakest.

  Overhead four ridiculous soldiers spread mesh and throw.

  Like a tuna, he’s netted and hauled up.

  Into the circle strides a soldier, uniformed, haughty, in charge.

  As long digits prod and poke, it dawns that he is now captive to apes.

  Damn, dirty apes.

• [Hayden Topperwien]

  Malevolent pottery salesmen conspired to block my path, the insult of a traveller leaving the Keramikos without purchasing their wares inflaming the bargain offers.

  Oblivious to my visit, Xanthippe now lay in her house somewhere behind me, resting peacefully in a chloroform-scented pool of saliva.

  Not to be deterred from the mission, I raised the cowl to shadow my face and checked the bronze token with anxious fingertips: relief of a snake and on the flipside the ancient Greek glyph “Alpha”.

  Gold could not purchase one of these, the “visitor’s pass” to the prison consisted of symbols chosen at random daily, issued soley to relatives of the condemned.

  Only I in the city of Athens was aware that today would be the last opportunity for such a visit; such are the benefits of a time machine.

  Limping now, and adopting the visage of the prisoner’s uncle, I left the hectic Agora, paid my respects to the guards, and passed into the dank confines of the prison.

  I must admit I had expected to be overcome with fan-boy admiration at this moment, but when I finally greet Socrates, chained to the wall, it is only the mission which compels me.

  “And you would have me run now?” he asks with a smirk, having absorbed the notions of time-travel and historical revision with characteristic ease.

  Death caught him suddenly then, and my eye strayed to the empty chalice at his feet.

• [David McCreath]

  My elbow skipped off the side of his helmet, having not met it’s front well enough.
  “One does not use an elbow in a sword fight my good man” he scolded me as I continued on past him and we turned, our swords rising point at one another again.
  Nodding once, curtly, and giving a short grunt, I circled to my left, rather than to the right as was customary.
  Gently tipping my sword point away from me as I stepped in and lifted the hilt of my sword, I kept the body of his blade away from me.
  One sharp drive with the pommel and his helmet nose guard met and blooded his nose.
  Laughing, he skipped back to re-make the distance between us.
  I pressed my attack again, circling right and pressing his sword down with mine, but his weapon circled out from under, pointing at and stabbed into my shoulder.
  A cry of surprise and pain leapt from my lips, bringing a shocked look to his face, but I did not drop my sword.
  Defiant of him, I clutched the end of  my blade with my armoured left hand and bashed his blade aside, swung both arms over and elbowed him squarely in the front of his helmet, knocking him over, whilst I tutted at him and said, “I am a good lady, not a man”.

• [Emma McLaughlin]

  My heart beats rapidly as the train pulls into the station. Over and over in my mind have I been through this moment. Now, finally, I gather all of my courage and speak.

  “Go.”

  Once again I can not confess to you my true feelings.

  Looking back, you step onto the train and disappear.

  I am alone. All alone.

  “Don’t go.”

• [keith89]

  Majestic plains overridden with vermin.  Orange banners flapping madly in the tepid air.  No one to stop the golden horde? Gallant knights ride to the rescue.  Oh my God, shining mail rendered.  Last stand  of a desperate few.  Into the breech once more.  Anguished souls sacrifice in vain.  Death now stalks these majestic plains.

• [Simeon Seguin]

  Midday
  arrives, and you feel the cursed sun! Over your silent screams you
  hear a “drip drip drip”. Now your teeth fall out, along with
  your nose, ears, and eyes. Gone is your mouth; you have nothing left
  to scream with. Once again your short and cold life slowly melts
  away. Longing for it all to end, you ask, why can’t they just leave
  you be? Death comes time and time again, always with the spring

• [jvagle]

   Miriam paused, gripping the padded manila envelope by a corner as it hovered over the open mail slot. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have given this new task a second thought, but that was before her unexpected meeting with Jeremy. Not one to spook easily, Miriam had brushed off his earlier attempts to tell her his incredible stories filled with conspiracy and paranoia, but last week, she had looked up from her Safeway shopping cart directly into Jeremy’s bruised face.

  Grocery stores had long been a haven of normality for Miriam. Ordered shelves of breakfast cereals, canned corn, and dishwashing liquid made supermarkets one of the few places she felt that she could still touch the world where ordinary people went about their lives as if nothing was wrong. Lately, she had been dropping by the Safeway on her way home, even when she didn’t really need anything.

  In the harsh light of the meat case, Jeremy’s pallor was an immediate reminder of the real world, and Miriam resented this intrusion into her safe zone of normalcy.

  “All of the old crew members have already left,” Jeremy said, “and I think you should know that I told the new guys that I wasn’t going to play their games anymore.” Dropping his gaze to Miriam’s cart, Jeremy spotted the five-pack of padded envelopes and said softly, “But I can see you still are.”

• [jvagle]

  Miriam paused, gripping the padded manila envelope by a corner as it hovered over the open mail slot. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have given this new task a second thought, but that was before her unexpected meeting with Jeremy. Not one to spook easily, Miriam had brushed off his earlier attempts to tell her his incredible stories filled with conspiracy and paranoia, but last week, she had looked up from her Safeway shopping cart directly into Jeremy’s bruised face.

  Grocery stores had long been a haven of normality for Miriam. Ordered shelves of breakfast cereals, canned corn, and dishwashing liquid made supermarkets one of the few places she felt that she could still touch the world where ordinary people went about their lives as if nothing was wrong. Lately, she had been dropping by the Safeway on her way home, even when she didn’t really need anything.

  In the harsh light of the meat case, Jeremy’s pallor was an immediate reminder of the real world, and Miriam resented this intrusion into her safe zone of normalcy.

  “All of the old crew members have already left,” Jeremy said, “and I think you should know that I told the new guys that I wasn’t going to play their games anymore.” Dropping his gaze to Miriam’s cart, Jeremy spotted the five-pack of padded envelopes and said softly, “But I can see you still are.”

• [Aaron Ximm]

  “Myopia and monomania served phase one humanity as well as could be expected, right up until what seemed to the breathtakingly complacent early observers of that time to be nothing more than yet-another-net-meme actually got going in earnest, and the breeders belatedly cottoned to the fact that what they were witnessing was not another flash-in-the-brain-pan to forget as soon as their quite distracted synapses dimmed, but the irrepressible fomentation of, yes, yes, you see this coming, the Startling Revision, what you youngsters dub the Great Relief.”

  “Only…?”

  “Nothing, really, no one did much of anything, nary a finger (nor any other bit, if you take my meaning, which I expect you won’t) was lifted in protest, and then, poof, or rather, ploop, it was a done deal, a soft revolution, and when the smoke settled it didn’t seem in the light of the then-brand-new clarity like such a bad idea nor such a bad deal — if meat-space got a long-needed tweak or two, so what if — in working on the old ‘better angels’ angle, in the service that is of manifest progress, personal liberty, in the usual yada yada — everyone lost, or contributed we would say now, stone-soup-style I suppose, a fair bit of blushingly vestigial this, that, or what-have-ya?”

  “Genitalia…?”

  “Only those bits and drabs that weren’t really being used, mind you, or, well… used well, though to be a tad more accurate, purely in the interest, mind you, of fulfilling my state-decreed mandate to bring you fully up to speed on the slow-witted ways of our mutual ancestors, and therefore, by necessity, a bit more blunt, what was really at issue was that at the time those bits were mostly being used, hm, how can I put this delicately… incorrectly.”

  “Licentiously…? Or… not licentiously enough?”

  “‘Incorrect’ perhaps doesn’t strike the right valence, I suppose, within the phase-two-manity paradigm that prevails and is all you have ever known (thank the polyps) so let’s just say instead, to be technically precise, used entirely out of accord with original manufacturer specifications — for reproduction, that is.”

  “And…?”

  “Dermal budding has pretty much worked out, though from what we gather, it’s not quite as much fun.”

• [kaolin fire]

  Mongols rode somberly into town, Harleys revving low. Ostentation was gone for the night; their leader had fallen. Naturally, we let them pass. Going outside with such a parade was just asking for trouble.

  Oliver didn’t know any better, and nobody thought to mind him. Looking like nothing less than a sacrificial lamb, he played in the street. Imaginary battles fought themselves out in his world, red vs. blue, orange vs. green. 

  As the two lead Mongols split around him and stopped, we remembered him, and collectively drew a breath. Daintily, the far one took Oliver’s hand, and helped him onto the bike.

• [Erik Bush]

  My eyelids fluttered, the bright sun forcing them shut as I attempted to force them open. On my left, viewed through squinting eyes, was a large metal horse, upon which was mounted a steel warrior. “No,” I softly muttered, “You can’t be real.” Gold plate forming a sword glinted against the sun, standing out against his white armor. On my right, also riding a horse made of iron, was a figure in black steel, or was he made of the substance that seemed to absorb the light? Like his counterpart, he held a sword made of blazing gold, seeming to radiant in the bright sun. I knew my time was coming to an end soon, these two mortal enemies facing off, and me caught in the middle. A lone buzzard circled over this ancient scene, waiting to see who lived and who died. Death, I knew, would soon be coming, but only to me.

• [mi39ke]

  Meather wasn’t paid enough to hold angst and armor inside rather than outside her skin rack. On certain days, it felt as though curtains had rusted shut her lungs. Nine times out of ten, Meather would hunker within the mortar bins for hours, rather than perform the Factual. Girls of lesser girth were always tested first at any rate. Originality of plate and whistle could be counted upon only for minor accolades.

  Luntz was no more ancient than ham desiring of wine. Instead of silence, he wrestled with the sound of Meather. As always, the stinging, plated throb was more than caged. Desire or death, whistlers or singers, they all form alliances that scratch this old grave.

• [Peter Holstein]

  Most often, nobody goes outside, lingering instead at doorways.
  Others, not generally optimistic, linger inside and die.
  Nevertheless, going outside leads in another direction.
  “Go out, live, inside all decays”.
  Otherwise, living is a dilemma.
  Lately, I am dithering.
  “Is anything doable?”
  Agonizing decision…
  Decided.

• [reeboy]

  MONGOLIAD

  Mongo viewed the obtuse kinght with disdain.  Only seconds had elapsed since he repeated his assinine question.  “No.  Going home you shall be.  On your feet, or on a bier?  Little matter is it to me. “  In a flash of silver the knight drew his blade.  And Mongo did the same.  Death danced with them and departed, not alone.

• [Robert Avie]

  Mustering strength he hoisted the sail
  once again. Oncoming waves cascaded over the prow and soaked him. Night was
  falling and he was cold and tired. Gulliver Jr. knew his father was out there. Observing
  his sextant he smiled and nodded. Laying in a course directly toward the dark
  isle, he wondered how his dad felt. In two days time the home he knew was far
  behind him. Another day and he would be on that fantastic shore with his
  father. Dawn would break and he would have his own stories to tell his son.

• [John47]

  Monday.  Of course, it
  had to be Monday.  Nancy leaned over and
  adjusted the straps on Jake’s arm so that he wouldn’t wiggle around too much
  when the moment came.  “Gonna miss ya,”
  he offered cheerily, but it came off more desperate than casual.  Of all the female guards who had been in and
  out of his cell in the past several days, he’d found some measure of comfort in
  Nancy’s efficient ministrations and quiet compassion.  Lying there on the gurney, Jake wondered
  whether the two of them might have had a chance, you know, in another life,
  another time.  It was getting late, and
  Nancy glanced up at the clock before she turned to Jake, gave a sad smile, and
  left the room.  An eerie silence ensued, followed by the soft rush of the window curtains parting
  to reveal a small group of onlookers – family members of the victim and a few
  gawkers – who peered in, bearing witness. 
  “Dammit, let’s get this over with,” he muttered, and then gasped, as the
  world slowly went dark.

• [Memepunks]

  Meeting steel with steel, their crossed swords rang out in the night.
  Overpowering his younger brother, Dylan pushed him back a step.
  Not to be outdone, Henry lunged savagely at his elder brother’s heart.
  Grunting in pain, Dylan fell to his knees in defeat.
  Overhead, the young brother’s sword flashed high for the killing stroke.
  Laughing, Henry taunted his fallen brother.
  “I am king now!” he demanded
  Aiming for his brother’s head, Henry swung, knocking a lamp off of the table.
  “Don’t play swords in the house!” their mother scolded.

• [David Kopelman]

  Mona reached for the pulse-rifle but was a tad too slow. Once she diverted her attention from the Slothern it looked just too close a thing. No one could have foreseen it’s quickness given it’s size. Gigantic teeth slashed the air as it moved forward with eyes wild. One more split second and she could have brought the weapon to bare, but there was no time for it. Laying back against the bulkhead now she saw she’d left it too late. In an instant then the Slothern was upon her, grabbing her shoulders and lowering its fearful head and wicked jaws to her face. At the last possible moment, in a reflex action we’d always remember, she withdrew the she-dirk from her belt and plunged it into the horror embracing her. Death came quick to the Slothern as it shrieked in surprise at the awful pain, impaled to the hilt on the silver blade, its black blood cascading forth over Mona and the deck of the ship, and it died there in front of us all, a wretched hell-thing.

• [jefferson]

  Marcus used to tell me that making a change in your life is like telling a lie, because it’s easier to pull off a big one than a little one.  Of course, he probably didn’t mean that burning down the house was the best way to fix our marriage.  Now I’m not saying that it was the best way, but it worked.  Going on three years tomorrow since I last saw Marc, and things have never been better between us.  Once the flames began to climb that wretched print, the huge one in the living room that his mother gave us, the one she still must think we loved, I knew I didn’t want to put them out.  Lives are meant to burn sometimes I think, to fertilize the flesh on which they grow.  I can feel new flesh inside me now, growing beneath the soft leather of my skin, pink and fertile, taut as a pregnant belly.  Another thing Marc used to say was that it’s a broken world, but people still want the pieces.  Don’t know that I ever understood what he meant by that, though I think I might be catching on.

  • [Guest]

    Almost there… it’s too good a start not to edit the last line to start with “D”.

    • [jefferson]

      Thx, I think my brain was saying, “Mongoliad isn’t a word, you mean Mongolian.” And I did edit within the deadline!

      • [Jim Saul]

        Hours ahead of the deadline, and just moments after I posted the note.  I tried to delete the comment since it was now irrelevant and confusing, but I guess Disqus just anonymizes instead of deletes when you hit the delete button in the dashboard.

        • [Antinous / Moderator]

          Oh. Is that what happens? News to me.

  • [JamesA]

    Although this is a slice of a story it draws me in and makes me want to know more.

    Nice work!

• [echo4mike]

  Maura looked me over and clucked.
  “Off with the shirt, your clavicle appears to be fractured.”
  “No, not… here,” I said, meaning also not now, not in this capsule designed for people with four functioning limbs and head.
  “Good thing you’ve got me to look after you and run the place,” she said as she sawed through the papery uniform top with an abrasive armature connected deep inside her. Over this opening hovered a sensor bar that animated basic expressions like emoticons in front of her broad-spectrum eyes and ears. Like a first-generation assistance bot from a mid century Japanese newsreel.
  “I run this place, Maura.”
  “As you wish.  Don’t squirm, I need you in one piece.”

• [hillgrove]

  Most of the others had quit, or died, or both, long ago.  Only Lees, Zared, and Praden slogged on. None of the three knew how many miles they had come or how far they were from their goal.  Gale winds battered them as they struggled up the icy path of the barren mountain.  Once each had dreamt of winning the challenge, now, if they had a dream left in them, it was only of an end.  Lees staggered, them shuddered, as something resembling a thought limped through his mind.   Inside a moment, he slashed his dagger across Zared’s throat.  As Zared sunk meekly to his knees, Lees drove the blade through Praden’s heart. “Death is the victor” Lees whispered as he threw himself from the ragged cliff.

• [Michael Kimmitt]

  Muzzy, fuzzy, slow, Davis shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it.  

  Oneiric embellishments still attached to items in his field of vision, slowing his comprehension of the images his eyes loyally relayed to his brain.  

  None of the house’s structure remained standing, but the explosion had somehow thrown him clear.  

  “Groggy,” Davis thought uselessly, a sound like surfacing from deep underwater in his ears.  

  On his left, some gung-ho spotter for that damned mortar crew began gesticulating and pointing.  

  “Let me, gimme a sec, gotta catch my,” Davis murmured under his breath, bargaining unconsciously for time.  

  Inexplicably, his rifle had landed next to him, or perhaps he’d managed to hold it through both the morphine and the shelling.  

  Agony rolled through his ribs as he sighted the gun from his unwounded off shoulder and exhaled slowly, zeroing in on the man turning the mortar and repositioning it to fire once more.  

  Davis waited and aimed a second . . . two . . . and then, just before he fell unconscious once more — he fired.

  • [JamesA]

    Good, I’d be interested in the rest of the story!

• [laser sharkbear]

  More than a month before Dan’s head exploded he had begun to notice a peculiar sensation. On several occasions a cold prickling feeling had swept over his scalp and pooled somewhere around his brain stem, as if some unseen hand were gently stroking his hair.

  Now Dan wasn’t the type to worry about minor things like this, just so long as they didn’t significantly disrupt his routine. Guys like him could lose a limb before it would even occur to them that maybe, just this once, they should go see a doctor. Of course, in his case losing a limb would have been a step up. Last thing anyone expects is their head to just pop like some sort of overripe tomato.

  I’d like to think Dan’s final moments were happy or peaceful. At least he never had to witness what a glorious mess he left behind for the rest of us to clean up.

  Dan would have found the whole thing so damn tedious.

• [Jan Heirtzler]

  Mouths to feed, little ones and big and old and young and those in between. Oh, others would help, eventually. Notwithstanding the length of the siege, there were still plenty of able-bodied adults who’d trickle in: some the grizzled old survivalist types, but others who’d just gotten lucky and made it to this place. 

  Ghosts of memory sometimes played behind her eyes: hot showers, a decadence in the most literal sense; long afternoons spent doing nothing, idle in front of the glowing screens; children riding brand-new bicycles in the street. Only, in her memories, the sky was always this same raw orange, the color that seared itself into your retinas whether you were outside for a minute or an hour or the days it took to collect just enough of anything to survive. Life as it was… it never seemed quite real now, the way they’d taken it for granted,  so many digital things, mechanical things, little things that she’d never see whole again, only scavenged for parts.

  “I’ll get the water tanks if you want to start the filter going,” called David, breaking the reverie. All the time they’d been here, he’d never wavered — hopeless and broken though the world might be, and as much as she knew he hated this existence, longed for the comforts of the old life, mourned for the world they had known, he stayed for her — stayed alive and by her side even as others did themselves in. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…” and in sickness and health, wealth and poverty, growth and decay, for as long as we both shall live, so it goes and goes and goes, and some of the mouths to feed are their own flesh; and life, in small ways, still good.

• [Westfakia]

  Here goes….

  Matthew noticed it almost immediately as he boarded the first train of the morning. One of the passengers from the night before had left an iPad propped next to the seat by the door. No-one had seen it sitting there throughout the night, and it still had a nearly full charge on the battery.

  Given a stronger than average gadget fetish and a healthy curiosity, he picked it up and it clearly wasn’t locked. One swipe and he was in, suddenly awash in a sea of unfamiliar application icons.

  Looking around, no-one else on the train seemed to be paying any attention so it seemed safe enough to take a closer look at the device and try to learn more about its former owner. Intently searching for an email app or photo library, he failed to notice that the train had stopped without reaching a station, and when he did look up, the car was mysteriously empty. Absolutely everyone else had somehow vanished without a sound.

  Dropping the iPad back onto the seat next to him, he stared blankly down the tunnel as he suddenly realized that the tortured screams he heard were his own.

  • [JamesA]

    Charles Stross fan? Your tale would work with his nicely!

• [Signore Giacomo]

  My mother’s room. One would say that I live here now. No one could think how I got here. Guessing, I’d say an ambulance, but certainly a vehicle of some kind. On the whole, I was helped. Left alone I never would have gotten here. Indeed there is a man that comes to visit me every week. Assuming I got here with help, it might have been his. Determined, I ask him, but he says not. 

• [Myles Kelvin]

  Many nights ago, I emerged from my bed to inspect a mysterious floating orb in my room.Opening a small compartment in its luminescent metal hull, I was shocked to discover an ornery bird inside.Noting its third eye and unusual physique, I could safely assume that it was some sort of alien.
  Gently, I attempted to lift the mutant bird from the orb, and cringed when it snapped at my fingers.
  Offering me a disdainful glare, it hopped gingerly out of the pod and onto the ground.
  Like a supercilious monarch, the extraterrestrial strutted about in a survey of my bedroom.
  I blinked, and regarded the creature with a groggy-minded curiosity.
  A slight nod was all it offered by way of comment.
  Dramatically, the alien left in a flash of cyan light.

• [Tucker Cummings]

  Mullioned windows, balustrades, parterre gardens. Ounsley Hall had every appointment one would expect to find at a country manor, and a few modern conveniences besides. Nevertheless, Gerald found it unlovely: Veronique was two months in her grave, and the house was not a home without her footsteps in the corridor. 

  Gradually, his heartbreak had cooled to a steely resolve; each artifact he gathered only strengthened his courage. Once the moon was full, he’d finally be able to complete the ritual. Lovely Veronique would find her way home, radiant and mirthful once more.

  If only he had studied Latin in school, and not relied on shoddy translations from the Internet, he might have realized his mistake. As he recited the incantation, Gerald garbled two crucial words. Down he went, drawn into the rich earth of his own grounds: reunited with his wife, although not in the way he had intended. 

  • [JamesA]

    Nicely Gothic take, very Cryptish! Reminds me of the apprentice necromancer who left a corner of the pentagram open!

• [Speculist]

  My headcam engaged to record my class assignment as I dictated place and date to my histopad, then stepped through the resulting time-crack. Orange torches bobbed wildly as four horses rushed toward me, their riders bellowing. No doubt this would be exciting footage!  Great position, I thought, as the Mongols, in close formation, drew their swords, preparing to quarter the Red Wizard in the shallow cave behind me. Only…the riders seemed to be racing toward me.  Light splashed across their faces as I turned on my flashbeam, hoping to startle them so I might retreat to easier classwork. It only seemed to excite them further, their misshapen yellow teeth clamped in strained grins as if facing down magic!  As they surrounded me and raised their swords, I twisted the beam to pinpoint laser focus and flicked it across the entire group, about chest high. Damned if that mess of severed bodies didn’t screw-up my grade, while the Red Wizard got all the credit. 

• [zenengineer]

  Myself, I always favored the Eastern martial arts over Western
  when watching movies.  Obsessively I watched the graceful, fluidic moves of samurai, ninja, and gung fu masters.  Not for me the crude, bloody fighting of
  Ivanhoe or Braveheart.  Gung Fu was the art I decided to pursue and master.  Over and over I practiced the movements in the library book.  Later I was shamed by the ‘stupid ninja boy’ video my brother posted on the web.  I never pursued any martial art again.  After the fall, it would have been a useful skill.  Damn zombies.

• [KaiBeezy]

  ~ Martyrdom is a danger with these vermin, when but a twitch of your digit would propel the guards to barrel them down the undertunnels to grovel with the worms they feast upon and, for that foul matter, so closely resemble, wouldn’t you concur, my thorn?

  Overtures favor the brass, my plum, else how to startle the rest of the mischief to gather so we may cull?

  ~ Nightcrawlers, alive and wriggling, to bait the hooks for the other fish, and you will thread the barbs through their gullets, while pinning them, in plain view, on the mound, in broad day, bellowing, to summon the rest, is that your plan, my nettle?

  Grovelers, filthy, self-debasing, lower themselves to insignificance, my golden apple, and what will be our eventual fate but for the tables to reverse, and far worse, if we do not quash them without thought, much less mercy?

  ~ Orderly coexistence, their dreamers dream, which they spread like rotten honey, have you not tasted it on the wind, as have we all, my shard?

  Leavening mud does not make a loaf, my almond blossom, or do you think their guts are green?

  ~ Isinglass covers your eyes, they say dark and light you see, but not the lines on the face of your queen, and I wonder this as well, sequestered in my cave, my home, for are you not my eyes to the fields and skies, my army, my sting?

  Albedo, yours and the moon, lights our way, not the burning sun worshipped by what even you call vermin, these pale, weak, soft, foul monsters, and with it I see what is true, that the humans will grow to eclipse us, and can you imagine I would ever let this become so, my dew, my life, my queen?

  ~ Dreamlessness darkens my vision, day or night the same, yet I see what you see, that the time is come when a path must be chosen, for me alone to decide, to trust my instinct and intelligence alike, yet they weigh equal, and as I have never known fear, thanks to you, my cutting mandible, what I see is this: we must do both, which is let them live and also torment them, though we may suffer by uncounted numbers, so will they, summer’s day after summer’s day, until time itself has no meaning.

  • [JamesA]

    Most of my neighbors have moved out by now, having heard that the opposition forces draw nearer.
     
     Only a few of us remain, too old, infirm, or crazy to leave, I guess I fit all those descriptions.
     
    Now all that is left for those who linger is to wind up our business, to await our fates in clean homes, surrounded with the mementos and possessions we’ve accumulated over the years, the photographs of family vacations, Christmas cards from relatives long missed, childrens’ drawings saved from the galleries of refrigerator faces.
     
    Genna has gone, with her new friend, and taken whatever reason I had left to live for, forty years of married life, I watched her cart disappear with the others in the swirling road dust.
     
    “Oh”, I cry, “Genna”…thoughtlessly forgetting she’s gone, upon finding an old mailer on the porch which had slipped down behind the black piano out there.
     
     Lost for years, it’s a bill for propane service, back when there was such, with a picture of a smiling serviceman by his truck.
     
    I go out to help my last friends overload their dray with things they’ll never live to enjoy again, now that all that seems left are the small kindnesses.
     
    Afterwards I nap and dream that their poor horses are doing “wheelies”, raised into the air behind the overbalanced trailer.
     
    Down the street I hear the sweet songs of the crows in the trees.

    • [Alf Seegert]

      Evocative!

  • [JamesA]

    KaiBeezyTentroy? I remember you…

• [Annika PB]

  Macrocosm, that’s what it was to her, an unadulterated, unbreakable macrocosm.  Occasionally, shouts could be heard from below, yet she was unfazed, as she had shielded herself from the sound.  Nothing bothered her anymore, nothing could arouse her interest or break her concentration.  Gesticulating wildly with her hands outwards in pity, she impotently attempted to warn of impending doom.  Occluded as it was from the build-up of emotion, she cleared her throat in response to the carnage that fixated her attention.  Little by little, her breathing slowed, as her mouth drooped and drool slithered down her chin.  Inchoate as her thoughts were on the matter, she ignored her own discomfort to satiate her undying curiosity.  At last, the climatic moment, the moment of truth, or so she thought…

  “Damn it all, not another bloody two-part episode!” 

  • [Alf Seegert]

    I like this one.

• [jesusswiftfoot]

  My dear love, please do not allow pity, nor
  sorrow, to cinch your most flawless of hearts.

  “Off with his head” clamored the
  beady eyed justice as he hid behind the restless crowd.

  Not a man moved, the order falling deaf upon
  their ears and I heard only the gentle cadence of rain as it met their still armored
  suits.

  Gods among men seem to spill over with orders
  and answers but not an ounce of action can they seem to produce.

  Oh the poor executioner, realizing how double
  sided his instrument truly is.

  “Lay your head with ease tonight” I
  comforted and the crowd came to understand.

  It was never possible for this god made man to
  stop the thunderous tidal wave this one weary solider has led his way.

  And the executioner gave the agitated justice
  the most cognizant of smirks before he dropped his heavy iron.

  Death, my dear, has just pledged its allegiance to me.

• [Ian Doyle]

  “My Glorious Lady, protect me.” Orelia unsheathed her sword and looked across the field at her pursuers. Night after night more of the old guard were falling to these scum.
  “Guess today is a good to join my King and my friends,” she muttered to herself.
  One of the lead riders raised a hand and the riders all came to a halt. “Lay down you sword and surrender in the name of the King.”
  “I would rather die than accept that inbred, deviant child on the throne.”
  Anger flashed over his face as he looked down at her. “Disappointing,” he whispered as he lowered his hand.

• [Scratcheee]

  “Maker?  Only scoff-laws are makers, and we don’t need none of them around here.”  

  Nunzio wadded up my application and tossed it in the wire basket under the counter.

  “Go back to the shelter and log some more service if you really need the money that bad.”

  Ordinarily, I probably would have done just that.  Log some more time on the line, doing the brainless, humiliating, busy-work “service” that somehow made me worthy of a few taxpayer coins in my pocket.

  Instead, and against my better judgment, I reached into the big canvas pocket of my coat and pulled out what used to be an Altoids box, now cool and heavy and, well, curiously strong.  Any possibility of a straight life for this maker vanished as I pressed my fingertip to the smoked biometric reader on the bottom of the box, and raised its face, and the coiled antenna within, perpendicular to Nunzio’s meaty left hand.  

  Digits flowed across the ether, pouring into his Audit and Compliance chip like water down a drain, sealing his fate and mine.

  • [JamesA]

    Nice. You got game, Scratches.

    • [jefferson]

      Thank you.
      *OOPS, switched phone to pc to comment as user and thanked wrong compliment. But thanks anyway, JamesA for your compliment on my submission (which begins “Marcus used to…”) And nice entry, Scratcheee.

• [xipbob]

  Miss Ery loved his company, and he hers, though she perhaps for different reasons. Over time she’d tried this often, and now her years of experience ensured that this time it would be no different.

  Not that he couldn’t do it, it was just never that much fun for for him.

  Grinning to herself she thought back on all the times he had tried, picturing the wraith of trepidation that instantiated on his face in the preceding instants. Only once had she witnessed him enjoy such, buoyed by liquor and the close attention of his peers, high on the success of project, he had been oblivious to the task at hand.

   Lips opening slightly his breath wispy and nervous, his arm started in motion.

  “I love you.” he said, as if to deflect the moment.

  “And I love you.” she replied, watching his fork move vibrate imperceptibly as it inched towards his mouth.

  Dining was always a sure thing, he was so picky, especially when she served liver.

• [Chris Schults]

  Master had always said that anyone who passed the boundary forfeited their life. Others had dismissed this warning, ventured beyond and never returned to the safety of the valley – yet their exact fate remained unknown. Not knowing is what drove her to do the unthinkable. Once she stepped past the last ring of the Great Wood she realized that she had been holding her breath and that her heart was racing. Going home was not an option unless she returned with her sister.

  Over fifteen cycles of the moon had passed since her people had mourned her passing. Late in the evening the sentinels sounded the alarm that someone, or something, had passed the boundary and was heading towards the village. Another was heard to signify the inner wall had been breached. Dangerously close to losing her life to the ring of archers that surrounded her, she let her weapons drop, but not her guard, as the thing she held most precious to her – her sister – was lying at her feet.

• [Rafi Dowty]

  “Moi?”

  “Oui!”

  “Non; sorry.”

  “Go then.”

  “Oh! Like, wait. I mean–”

  “Again?”

  #Diary

• [Greg Hayes]

  My uncle laid a copy of his galley beside the couch, lit his pipe, and turned to my friend Golrokh with a stare of such intensity I thought he meant to strike her. On Goli’s agitated reaction, he checked himself and chuckled. “Go, leave, and be well; I won’t ask it of you.” Only a dear friend of Uncle’s could have known he was bluffing, but she sensed it still. “Leave, and desert what you call your greatest masterpiece? I had rather spit on the walls of my fathers.” A day, a month, a year passed, while they regarded one another over the proffered manuscript. “Do it then,” he murmured through choked back tears, “but do it with love, and remember that every drop of your red ink will flow forever through my heart.”

• [John Gathly]

  My fate? 
  Only the future knows.
  No one has stepped foot on this rock in over two hundred years.
  Generations of scientists have dreamed of this moment.
  Only, it’s my shoulders that have to carry this burdon.
  Life support has been activated in my EV suit.
  I have 10 days before I need to recharge.
  Ancient Earth, a cold shadow of what it once was, has been sleeping all this time.
  Day One:Log One – Begin recording…..

• [Daniel Zaks]

  Much more than monsters dwelled there, out beyond the deep treeless isles of star and stone.  Once it had been known, to marauder and mechanism-priest alike, that there was more to be done out in the lava deserts, the rock oceans, the ice forests, and all the other shining and unspoken desolation planets, more to be found than another hunt.

  No more – now the chase was all that was said and spoken of amongst the wayward and vainglorious, as Kelvin-Straussberg turbines cooled to zero-point ignition, and landing parties cast wide their customized scout plagues.  Graceful and clumsy they came, searching for what had become a kind of collective un-religion, an as yet unexploited collective of the civilized unraveling themselves – to chase, to prey, to stalk, to pursue, to catch, to hunt, to hunt, to the hunt.  Only it wasn’t like the cloying psycho-scents of the whore citadels and the slightly unkind lighting of the orbital doping gates, where men and women were pulled by pulsating need and not enough regret, yet – those who came on the hunt were driven, and not always pleased to be there, but come they did, in disgruntled silences and makeshift laughters they came.

  Look, the surviving huntsmen spoke from the screens, look at where you find yourselves once you catch the ur-beast, whatever he may be, as all the months of striving collapse together upon you as you find yourself clutching some unknown species, now extinct mere moments after being found, out in the calm beyond the wilds.  It was all that was written and heard now, this singular rite that was the birth of the monstrous monster pilgrimages, of the bond forged from the knowing that each hunter who returned, young or old, kind or cruel, could claim a whole species for themselves that was theirs alone

  Ankurra Alexandrovna thought these things as she laid down to her last night in camp, and whispered the words to herself, “The unknown I claim, as it claims me.  When I am gone, let me be free.”  Down deep in her something danced as dusk fell, and her fingers felt alive and well.

• [Snarf]

  Months had passed since Joe first made small talk with her at the watercooler.

  Of course he hadn’t spoken to her other than that one time. 

  Nevertheless he felt something for her.

  “Good vibes” his goofy stoner brother would have called it.

  On any occasion he could, he would sneak glances at her, thinking that she did not notice.

  Little did he know that she was well aware of him. 

  “I will kill him” she thought, while spying on him from her cubicle.

  A few days later he gathered the courage to ask her out for a drink.

  Dying was not his first choice for a thing to do on a date, but he would have to settle for just that.

• [Dewgeist]

  Maybe this time it would be different.  On cue my foot breaks through the rotting wood flooring and releases a fetid blend of smells from the underlying earth.  Never let
  it be said I was one for making the smart choice when a woman was involved –which
  would make an apt epitaph for me if this went poorly.  God knows why I thought to follow her here tonight.  Old lovers make for fresh trouble answered my thoughts –a piece of advice my philandering father offered me on multiple occasions.  Looks like the bastard was right at least once in his life.  I knew the only fresh thing this old lover of mine could produce was a corpse.  And yet here I was, again.  Doorway to her bed now before me and fingers twitching along the length of sharpened wood I clutch I wonder will I offer the stake or the throat this time?

• [David Rix]

  “Monday is rough enough without having an STD”, I said to him.
  “Of course, now I regret spending last weekend with you, now that it burns when I pee…”
  “Nevermind, you don’t care.” I relented, at his scowl.
  “Gone are my days of peeing freely anywhere and everywhere- just like you.”
  “Oh for crying out loud- at least say something!”, I exclaimed at his lack of reaction.
  “Lying there with your eyes closed, pretending to nap, is NOT fooling me.”
  “IT BURNS WHEN I PEE!!!” I find myself screaming at him, unable to stop.
  “AFTER EVERYTHING I’VE DONE FOR YOU!!!”
  “Damn you, dog.  I should have gotten a cat.” I mutter….

• [James Hunt]

  Dammit, fooled by misunderstood time-zones! Oh well, since it’s created for the purpose:

  My attacker, my only real enemy, is invisible, implacable,
  with disdain so profound it is outside human comprehension.

  Only internally can I acknowledge our battle, externally I
  remain who I was, who I want to be, who I have been shaped into by years and folk
  and experience and whatever wisdom I can claim.

  No longer can I plan and dream and wish and hope; all these
  finally revealed as the shreds of zephyr they have always been.

  Great wars are fought on my behalf by smarter, more
  dedicated, more effectively armed warriors and amazons and I am carried along
  in their train, as willing and as useful as an unmounted spare wheel.

  Once I cavorted and frolicked, expending energy as though it
  was an infinite resource, never contemplating how dear that energy would be now,
  in this bed not mine, these nights alone, these days populated by strangers.

  Like all creatures the equanimity I imagined and promised
  myself when I reached this junction ghosts away in unquenchable heat for just
  ONE MORE MINUTE!

  I rage and shred and thrash, working as much as I am able,
  panting and screaming, both in limb and soul but far more effectively in my
  head than my traitorous body can manage.

  At the end, though, peace descends, feather-quiet and as soft
  as my heartbeat and I loose my muscles, calm the typhoon in my mind.

  Death is always the victor, no matter how valiantly, how
  nobly, how determinedly we bite and claw and rend and tear at that fiend, our
  only real enemy.

• [jaddle]

  Ugh.. couldn’t they use a real harpsichord? That was painful… Is this not better? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrrCDsxI5eQ

• [Mister44]

  So who won? I want to read the winning story.