Torture
Reflected in the steel above, I watch the red line widen as he traces the scalpel from my navel to between my breasts. I tense as the sting turns from bliste...
Flash
Smoke
Peter wanted a smoke. It wasn’t so much a physical need as an emotional imperative. After all, he was three years old. Fucking gypsies.
Wendell's Solution
‘How the Hell did he get up there?’ thought Tony as he looked up the rampart wall of the prison’s exercise yard. Wendell held what could only be a shiv to th...
Caught
I waited impatiently for my computer to shut down. It’d been a long day of meetings and Brenda called several times.
The Last Days of the Marcy Bell
Officially, the Marcy Bell was a salvage rig, licensed for Canadian and international waters but not American. Since 9/11, it was only through a sea of red t...
Dead Inside
Eunice sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed and stared out the window, the rustling of leaves muted by glass. Spotting a flash of motion to her left, she sn...
Random
“Goddam it,” Rita O’Neill said as she let the curtains slide back into place. She stomped out of the kitchen and met Rodney in the driveway, her nails biting...
Human Oddity
I smelled the human long before I laid my seventeen eyes on him. All that fur and sweat! I greeted him as best as my translator-matrix would allow, but I thi...
Billy Doesn't Fit In
Billy hated being an alien. His green skin didn’t match anything the other kids wore at school. His mother always had to cut holes in his trousers to accommo...
Western Standoff
Billy: Ya rascally varmit, git back here! Davey: Who’s gonna make me? Tommy: That’d be me. Billy: With what, yer lady’s ladel? Tommy: Better than yer rol...
Poor Kid
The Sheriff hauled Jimmy to the gallows to become acquainted with the hangman’s knot. You see, he tried to clean the table with a counterfeit full-house. Dru...
Jolene
Me and Little Tim race our horses hard trying to catch up to the train. I saw him tumble from his mount. If the bullet didn’t kill him, surely the trampling ...