The figure didn’t show its face. Just stared at me from the void-like eye cavities of a ghoulish white mask. “Don’t be afraid.” The mask distorted its voice, and I trembled. It stepped toward me then crouched to my level. “You’ve lost much, lad.”
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After the long cold of winter, the sun’s warmth felt glorious. I knelt by the river to refill my pot, the water chilled by mountain snowmelt. Nearby, the other village women were washing clothes, their children playing beside them.
“Siv!” Fulla smiled at me from the knot of women. “Good to see you up and about
The Main Event: Me versus Sea.
A fight to the finish—probably mine. My opponent is the ocean.
Water’s a liquid? Tell the riptide that. Solid as a giant’s fist, it hauls me farther out every second. To defeat me, the riptide doesn’t drag me under. It doesn’t have to.
His journey had been long and treacherous, but Cheddar had found it. An oasis, untouched by man, vast and plentiful. The wasteland of legends. A sprawling pile of rotten garbage more beautiful than all the dumpsters in Manhattan the day after Thanksgiving.
The Great Trash Barrier Island.
Cheddar the Rat wept at its filthy glory.
Kylie burst through the door so fast that her palm stung from the impact.
The rooftop lounge was empty.
Of course it was. No one ever came up here this time of day—or at least no one was supposed to. But now, not even Tom was sleeping in his favorite Adirondack.
Late again, late again.
Andrew Ashton rushed from his parents’ two story, cookie-cutter home, his Converse sneakers scuffing the sidewalk. He struggled to hoist his backpack on, and the straps slid against the nylon of his bomber jacket. He frowned. Everything was harder since the accident that had taken half his left arm.
I whistled as I stepped from my house. Per usual, I was clad in my nano-suit, a second skin to protect me from harm. You couldn’t see it—to most eyes I looked like any kid walking the street. Well, any kid in a trench coat with goggles perched on his forehead.
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The flower opened silently. Unremarkably. Alone in the forest’s center, right where I’d planted it. Beautiful. Unnoticed. Deadly.
Smiling, I crouched beside it. They’d never suspect this. Those humans were too busy worrying about World War III, global warming, and zombies to stop and smell the flowers.
Their loss.
I reached for my kitten Cleo instead of my phone. Social media wasn’t a happy place right now, not with everything going on.
Balancing Cleo on my shoulder, I shuffled to the kitchen. There by the door lay a carefully folded piece of paper. Probably my Star-Trek-enthusiast neighbors.
I don’t realize we’re under attack until it’s too late.
I leave work, heading for my car. How much longer can I put up with the stress and dissatisfaction of this dead-end job? Why can’t I figure my life out? I’m so done with all this crap. My thoughts, like always, are an emotional jumble,
I haven’t found the right universe yet.
“What do you think?” Cleo’s feet squish into the swampy ground with each step.
I peer through the tiny tear in the fabric of our universe. On the other side is a different world––blanketed in reddish stone with deep canyons and majestic mountains.
“Well?” Cleo demands.
Azar pulled her Harley out of the haze of rush-hour traffic into an unused parking lot and scanned the expanse of asphalt and concrete. Not a blade of grass broke the gray monotony. No flicker of the royal soldiers’ red-edged, black scales.
She parked beside a concrete slope supporting a busier access street,
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