Category: Fiction

A solitary figure, heavily bundled in warm clothing, slowly left the top step of a staircase that had been roughly hewn into the mountainside so long ago that it looked like a natural feature. Hunched over against bitterly cold wind, mirrored goggles were clear above two months of unkempt white beard that had long since…

I was sitting in my own car’s passenger seat, holding my phone in my right hand while cradling the remaining half of a drive-thru fast food hamburger that had gone soggy in my left, thinking about the long strange trip this had been. Have I been shadowing him for over eight hours? I thought. I guess he really…

The hairless apes show up again. You ignore them as best as you can, as you push another seed into the ground with the heel of your left palm. You shift the bag slung across your other shoulder, now feeling almost empty. You are nearly halfway done here, and you can see that a pile…

“Welcome back! Seventy-five percent of you paused this while streaming my show to use the bathroom, then hit the fast-forward button until the end of our last messages. You missed a pretty flower in the third commercial. For those of you distracted by your phones, this is Obviously, with Joe Smith which is obviously a…

The landlord of the brick building on the corner of 18th Street and Elm sometimes wondered exactly how his longest and best tenant, a cafe with a board game theme, could stay in business on this side of town. There had been maybe two other patrons inside each time the landlord had visited in person…

I finished my drink and placed the empty glass on the bar. I really wanted another, but my right hand was itchy. The owner of this place was playing bartender, in case I needed a reminder of just how auspicious and thoroughly-commercialized a guest I was. His name was Frank, maybe. He approached and cleared…

Before I lost all radio and satellite contact, I had been flying solo on a simple survey mission, deep in unexplored parts of the asteroid belt. Out here, until I found something worth mining and the opportunists showed up, transponder signals from Central Authority were sparse and low powered on a good day. But, my…