There was no point in thawing bagels when the twenty-foot-long alligator you were babysitting preferred them frozen.
“Make sure Wallace eats one before the moon is out,” Frank had said before leaving for work. “Whenever it’s a full moon, he gets very hungry.”
The torture had stopped being pain three days ago. After a while, sensation was only data. Now it was just weather.
I slumped against the far wall of my cell, metal biting into my wrists. The shackles were designed for smaller creatures. They cut
“It’s dangerous to stay here.” Lili gazed at me with red-brown eyes. “We should go.”
Leave the comfort of Steve and Talia’s house? I had to calm Lili’s fears before she ruined the good thing we had going.
“We’re house flies,” I protested. “If we weren’t meant to live in houses, why call us that?
Everyone knows how the stories go.
The princess imprisoned by a dragon. Then the knight comes and fights the dragon with his mighty lance and rescues the lady.
It’s a good story to tell around the hearth on a winter’s night.
There’s only one trouble with it, and I see that now:
It is day 1,826 of my captivity. As usual, I stand silent in the treasure room, dusting cloth in hand, ankles in chains. But since it’s also Supremacy Day, I’ve seen an unusually high number of visitors. Dozens of blue people stopping by to
Read it now
Red belongs to the Strongman. It’s the color of passion and rage, of birth and death—things he alone controls—and to wear it outside his city is to beckon the bloodwatchers’ blades.
Yet my sister and I pass through a field
“It isn’t finished. It isn’t finished,” the girl mumbled almost hysterically. The glow of her eyes reflected on the screen. Red irises focusing intensely on the device.
“Scarlata,” a male voice sounded behind her.
She remained fixed on her task.
“There’s nothing you
Being chased sucks.
Why did I believe my parents when they said we’d be safe in the woods?
“Zombies don’t go way out there,” Dad assured me.
“And it’ll be nice to get away from the madness,” Mom added.
Yeah, well, now they’re zombified just like
The sun shone kindly upon me as I sharpened my sword, taking satisfaction in the shink, shink, shink. A butterfly perched nearby on a blade of emerald grass.
My lazy smile widened. “Hello! It feels so good to be free, doesn’t it?”
A low buzz
“528 Cactus, this is Quik-Warp fueling station, what is your routing number?” a monotone voice buzzed over the coms.
Tabytha cruised toward the little station, steering with her knees as she pinned back the sides of her awkward not-quite-pixie hair before flipping
“Wake up!” a man barks through a respirator mask as he raps his baton across the window my head rests against.
I stretch open my drugged eyelids and meet an unrecognizable world. I’m waking up to falling ash and a crimson sky.
“It’s the
My name is Gaspard Jerome Masson, and I have one regret.
The last word smudged beneath the old man’s trembling hand. He drew a breath, then continued writing.
Her name was Marie.
###
June 6, 1944
Rennes, France
“Gaspard! They’re coming!”
Gaspard shot up from his seat. Marie burst through the door of his small apartment
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