The signal was weak but unmistakable: the rebel waypoint. They had made it!
Staggering through thick forest undergrowth, Sam and Tony picked up their pace as much as Sam’s mangled leg would allow. Even though Tony helped support Sam’s weight, every step sent a spear of pain shooting up his hastily bandaged leg,
Read it now
The official communication mirror flickered into life as I sat in the throne room reviewing correspondence with Prince Corduroy. I may be a princess, but I was also his employee.
“Corduroy,” boomed the Magic Administrator. The most powerful man in Afteria, he always spoke in bellows. “Your latest petition has caught our attention.”
Read it now
he flower, if indeed it could be called a flower, looked like nothing on Earth.
Iris squinted at the purplish inkblot staining the vast green landscape of her garden shrubbery. It seemed to have bloomed overnight in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable hedgerow.
Without her glasses to aid her, Iris struggled
Read it now
As I stepped into my apartment, the aroma of chocolate greeted me. I hung up my coat and shook the weariness from my shoulders, while my mouth watered from the fresh, chocolatey goodness wafting from my kitchen.
Like cookies. Gooey triple chocolate cookies I’d eaten at Grandma’s house when I was a little girl.
Read it now
I sit, enthroned in the branches of a mighty oak. Waiting…
Grandmother had warned us not to gather herbs in the woods. “Beware the wolf who hunts the forest for unsuspecting souls,” she would say.
That day, I forgot.
I should have known better, but I was drawn by a man more beautiful
Colors splashed behind the blind man’s eyes as he stumbled through a crowded marketplace. An eruption pulsing between blood red and pale blue shouldered past. A burst of yellow and brown darted in front. Kolzak swallowed down a wave of nausea, forcing himself not to collapse under the colors relentlessly smashing into his mind
Read it now
The king is dead.
I slump in my best dress on the pew at the back of the cathedral while the funeral bells toll overhead. Outside the church, villagers scream in protest at the leaving nobility, whose emotions stream behind them in trails of color. Amber irritation. Pale boredom. Sour, brown fear.
Donny Chandler would never tell me what I needed to know. Which was why I needed to get the hiccups.
Great.
I slunk into Tornado Taco on the corner of Main Street and Bell Avenue. The last time I was here, I made a complete fool of myself. Not my fault, but still…
“Earth to Echo.”
Electricity courses through Echo as Darbo’s deep voice prods her consciousness. She stirs, blinking out at the spaceship’s main chamber.
My jail cell.
Darbo stands by the main control panel, pressing the button that shoots shock waves across Echo’s incorporeal form. Nearby, his daughter Delilah crunches on star-puffs
Of all the underground clubs in this sodden sponge of a city, it had to be that one.
I tugged my fedora lower over my brows, but it did little to block out the damp chill of the October night. My neck prickled as I surveyed the disturbing sight splayed out on the alley’s cracked asphalt.
I watch through frosted windowpanes as the alchemist rides into town.
His furs are damp with dew, his hands hidden but for his reddened fingers. He glances up at the orphanage, and the vision lashes my eyes like a pine branch.
A fat old man with dead eyes. A little black bottle
“You find them in the weirdest places,” Aida said to me.
She overturned a rock. A black and yellow-spotted salamander scampered beneath a nearby mossy log.
“I haven’t looked for salamanders since elementary school,” I said, getting ready to squat next to her. “I’m game.”
Read it now
Recent Comments