“Merry Christmas, Eliza.”
My husband Reynolds ruffled my dark hair, waking me. I came to on the living room couch with a gasp and wiped my mouth. My fingers passed over the pillow lines on my face.
It was nice to have a body again, after being dead for so long.
The thought
A chill rattles my body, more than warranted by the crisp December air. There’s a widget heist in progress, I know it. I have an instinct for these things.
That and the twenty-foot section of chain-link fence flattened under tire tracks.
Giselle Gizmoskowicz, the Gizmo Wizard of Scare City, has long sought a gizmo-nopoly
They call her the Ice Queen. They say she has no heart.
I know better, because she entrusted me with its care.
I struggle through the snowdrifts, my frozen breaths blending with the blinding mist. If the people of my kingdom knew I was attempting this, they’d call me crazy.
But they hadn’t spent
“Do we have to go this way?” Edelweiss whispered, clutching my arm as we maneuvered through the shadowy valley. Dark, frozen cliffsides loomed on each side. Heaps of snow and rock shards rendered the path nearly invisible. “Isn’t this giant territory?”
“There’s no going around it,” I whispered back to her, fingers ready to
The zombies had the stronghold surrounded. But what else was new?
Kicking my feet up on my desk, I clicked on my handheld recorder. “This is Commander Corinthia II—that’s ‘Cori’ to my friends, ‘Commander’ to the rest of you—with an update on our situation. It’s day…” I glanced at the walls of my concrete room. The hordes of tally marks looked like the desperate clawing of the undead. “…day unknown of The Z Siege. The Oasis is holding up fairly well.” What could zombies do to a concrete fortress in the middle of a desert? Arm themselves with cactus battering rams and charge?
Ice battered the door as Newt flipped his farm sign to “Closed” and released a happy sigh. Another year of cutting and baling noble firs seven times his height and trying not to get squashed by troll customers was complete.
He’d survived.
He pressed his body against the door, fighting the wind
Elianna released two bursts from her jet pack and realigned with Polaris.
The jarring incineration alarm blared on her exosuit, triggering her heart to beat a staccato. She suppressed a squeal. I’m actually saving the North Star!
Geysers popped and spewed gas on the yellow giant’s surface, hundreds of miles away, but she could
“Jack!” I shove a strand of wild red hair beneath the hood of my cloak. “Come out right now!”
As I stomp through the moonlit snow to reach the lake just ahead, my thoughts swirl back to the hustle and bustle of party preparations this morning. To Jack and Holly off in the corner
Announcing the winners of the “Remember November” flash fiction contest!
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My ability to shift from mermaid to human ended at midnight. Unless you believed the stories about true love’s kiss under the mistletoe granting the ability of transformation. Which I didn’t. So I only had a few hours to observe the real effects of the mysterious plant and secure a sample.
I surfaced in
Grandmother would tell me stories about the Cliffs of Faerie—and the monsters that lived there. The creatures that crossed into that snowy realm would change in ways none understood.
But t’night was worth the risk.
I crept down the rough-hewn stairs of our cottage, lantern in hand. Grandmother tossed in fits
“I don’t see what the big deal is.” I twitch the reins. “It’s not like this is my first time herding caribou or something. I mean, the Big Man was acting like I’m completely inept, but I wasn’t the one waltzing on black ice with the missus. Maybe it’s the sloping forehead.
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