Stories

  • Annie’s Planets

    by Lee Budar-Danoff

    Nico noticed the little girl as she pressed herself against the glass window of his antique store. She stared with intent but when he smiled, she didn’t smile back.

    He returned to his work but looked up over the wire-rim of his glasses as the bell above the door tinkled. The little girl strode in, black braid swishing behind her, followed by a frazzled woman.

    “Annie, wait,” the woman said, but the girl ignored her. Instead she stopped at the end of the counter to focus on the project in front of Nico.

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  • Layover

    by T. Gene Davis

    “The layover was only two years.”

    Hazel let out a breath and crinkled her already wrinkled forehead. “He told me about it.”

    Keira bounced her newborn child, more to calm herself than to calm the baby. “We’re newlyweds. How could he die? Was there a malfunction in stasis?”

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  • Closing Statement

    by David Steffen

    Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I don’t expect you to understand. The mountain of evidence that seems to support the prosecution’s case is daunting to say the least, but all of it is based on an adolescent understanding of the forces that move the universe. I must stress to you once again that Ambassador Gupta is alive and well.

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  • Jack Twice-Caught and the Pusherman

    by Patrick J. Hurley

    No one in Bridge could remember exactly when the legend of the Pusherman began. As folk began to go missing, the stories just appeared, fully formed, as if they had fallen from the sky. Some in Bridge whispered that the Pusherman was an old graybeard who hunted children playing along the Edge because he was envious of their youth. Others said he was a jealous husband who pushed his cheating wife over the Edge and came to enjoy the taste of murder.

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  • Heart Patent

    by T. Gene Davis

    “Owen! You’ve got snail mail!”

    “What’s that?” Owen asked, taking the envelope from his father.

    “Don’t they teach you kids anything at college?”

    Owen opened the envelope, and read the single sheet of paper. His father whistled from over his shoulder. “That looks official. Is it a scam?”

    You are hereby ordered by the court to appear in civil hearing of copyright infringement, patent infringement, smuggling, and bootlegging of a human organ.

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  • Jackson’s Cat Videos

    by T. Gene Davis

    Jackson looked up from a cat video at the sound of flopping sandals on the floor he’d just cleaned. His expressionless middle-aged face bore the slightest frown. Was she management? She looked more like a tongue depressor escaped from a gardening expo than a supervisor. However, he didn’t know all the ship’s managers, so he placed his device in his pocket discretely. He picked up his mop from the floor and examined her progress. She left a trail of echoing “THOP” sounds across the hall’s tiled expanse.

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  • Self Service

    by Paul A. Hamilton

    Before pregnancy became extinct and babies stopped being born, the greasing of death’s once firm grip caused a lot of worry about the potential of the revived. Would they turn vicious? Could they be restored to a responsive state? How much humanity do we ascribe to an animated cadaver?

    I stayed apart from it all. I had my farm, my family. Cora was marrying age, but once it became clear there wouldn’t be any grandchildren forthcoming, Ma stopped needling her. When the corpses wandered through, stinking, twitching, chattering, Bub and I ushered them off our land, gently, respectfully. Then we went back to work. Outside, the world clashed and gnashed its collective teeth. I had less use for it than ever.

    Cora got sick first. I drove her into the city, threading my way past thickening crowds of the dead. She wheezed from the passenger seat of my pickup; pressed her fingers against the side window as if she were reaching for those grim mannequins.

    “When did there get to be so many of them?”

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  • Sidewalk Sorcery

    by Rebecca Buchanan

    “Stop it, TJ, you’re doin’ it wrong!”

    “Shut up, Alex, I am not.” Chalk staining his fingers, TJ drew a double inverted arrow, piercing the center of the circle.

    “Are, too!” Alex crouched beside his brother, careful not to smudge the lines. “That’s not the way Mom showed us—”

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  • The Old Man on the Green

    by Philip Brian Hall

    If it is true that the Devil makes work for idle hands, then the Devil never met Old Joe. For as long as anyone could remember, Old Joe had been well past working age; indeed no-one in Micklethwaite could really recall his former trade.

    Mavis Claythorpe, who knew everyone’s business and could not bear to admit to ignorance of anything, claimed her grandfather had worked with Joe as a thatcher, but Janet Armstrong, the blacksmith’s widow, who had comfortably exceeded her biblical span, was prepared to swear Old Joe had already been ‘Old Joe’ when she was a little girl. To the best of her recollection, the fallen tree beside the duck pond on the green, into which a seat had been roughly hewn by the removal of a quarter-round section, had always been the vantage point for the graybeard’s observation of the slow rhythms of village life.

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  • New Growth

    by Tara Campbell

    Misty watched Joe pace the living room.  Things had been going missing—car keys, loose change, magazines, and now his cigarettes.

    “That’s the second pack this week,” he growled, lifting a stack of papers off the coffee table.

    “Sorry, Joe,” she said from the couch.

    “How does this keep happening?”  He stomped into the kitchen and Misty heard drawers opening and banging shut.  The edge in his voice told her to stay on the couch, out of his way.

    He stalked back out of the kitchen and stood in the living room, fists on hips.  Misty watched him take a deep breath in and out as he scanned shelves and windowsills.  She supposed he was counting to ten.  “Guess I need to get another pack,” he grumbled.

    She had to get him out of this mood.  “Maybe Chelsea’s swiping them,” she said, reaching over to pet the small, rust-colored tabby curled up next to her.  “Maybe kitty doesn’t like smoking in the house.”  Chelsea purred and rolled over to expose her soft white belly.  Misty looked up at Joe with a tentative smile.

    “The cat, eh?”  His face was unreadable.  Behind her smile, Misty clenched her teeth as he sat down next to her on the couch.

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