Havok Publishing

Tag - choices

Black Friday Stinks

“I can’t believe you hacked the store’s security cameras,” Sophie said in awe. The laptop screen illuminated Caleb’s dark apartment. In the bottom right corner, a tiny display read 12:57.
“Child’s play.” Caleb puffed his chest out. “In fact, I hacked everything. I can run the whole show from this laptop. Of course, it helps that management actually trusts me.”

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Not Heartless Yet

The other thieves whisper that I’m cursed. Dangerous, like all unknowns. They say I’m cold as ice. Heartless. They call me Sixth—a nickname I’d earned in my initiation into their gang—not the name my mother gave her son.
To them, I’m nothing more than the mask I’ve presented.
They might be right.

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Man of Theseus

When I woke, I could feel each fiber of the plasticky hospital sheet covering me. But it was distant, almost like someone else was feeling it. I pulled off the sheet and stared at two human-looking legs. I dug my fingernails into my right quadricep hard enough to make it bleed but felt no pain.

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Maiden Voyage

“Need a seatbelt, kid?” Gregory smirked.
Robin loosened his white-knuckled grip on the handrail. “I’m good.” He’d expected a wild ride, but time travel was like a thirty-story elevator drop into the past. The machine even dinged as it swooped to a stop. While Robin waited for his vertigo to pass…

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Colored Blankets

You wrap me in colored blankets every night, muttering to yourself in an ancient tongue, the words falling from your lips like a desperate prayer, like a spell that never finds its mark. You are a mother at heart—just not my mother.
I watch you empty the basin at my window,

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Fire from Heaven

I sit up gasping, drenched in sweat. For the third time this week, I’ve awoken from nightmares of our city on fire. People screaming, houses exploding.
Each nightmare ends the same way–with blackened bodies staring at me from their smoldering graves.
I leave our bed to stare out the window with my oil lamp…

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Guardian of the Kunlun Mountains

Fear constricted Tara’s throat and sent her heart racing as the plane’s turbulence intensified. Passengers gasped and objects rattled in the overhead bins.
Ironic that she would die here, thrown into the very mountain peaks she spent her entire graduate thesis studying.
“Why me?” She swallowed as more turbulence rocked her.

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Rydinger and the Wolf

Rydinger flipped the hood over his head as a chill wind whipped around a corner. He clutched the waxed fabric parcel closer.
“You sure about this, Red?” His insides twisted at his cowardice. Nessa deserved better.
The shadow in front of him didn’t slow.
“I guess that’s my answer,” he muttered, quickening

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Man Nor Beast

“Help!”
The voice is desperate. Wild. It cuts through the screaming winds and lashing sheets of rain that pound you and the earth. You lift your lantern, peering into the blackness as you attempt to steady your pounding heart.
You see naught but the driven rain at first; even the ground is murky…

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No Matter the Cost

Ty watched his wife pause beneath the ferns, face tilted toward the leafy canopy above. After taking a selfie in front of Blarney Castle, Beth had been more interested in exploring the surrounding gardens than standing in line to kiss the Blarney Stone. After all, who knew how many people had kissed that rock?

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Son

Royal walked through the granite street of Beryl City thinking of how he would kill his father. Elegant buildings towered on each side of the wide road, testaments of just how full of life this city was compared to the middle-of-nowhere hole he grew up in. Every few houses, his father’s flag flew,

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