I groaned, rubbing my hands over my eyes. It didn’t really make the aching go away, but I knew that, by the end of my shift, I’d feel worse.
A couple seats over from me, Ricky, the junior technician on duty, looked up with sympathy. “Hey, Dana, I’ve got some aspirin in my bag if you need one,” he offered gallantly.
I managed to give him a weak smile. “Thanks, Ricky,” I told him, “but I’m okay for now. Just getting ready to tackle the next batch of messages.” Continue reading
As it turns out, slaying dragons is a bit like riding a bike; once you get the hang of it, you pretty much just need to worry about hanging on and not tumbling off.
Of course, I never really got the hang of riding a bike.
This thought flashed through my head at precisely the wrong moment, as I clung desperately to the handle of the sword. The scales around me felt just as slick as they looked, and offered little in the way of handholds. I just clung to the handle of the sword, feeling it sink a little deeper in the thrashing, bellowing wyrm with each stomach-dropping plunge through the sky.
“Just give up and die already!” I shouted, even though the rushing wind whipped the words out of my mouth before anyone else could hear them. “Go down! Down!” Continue reading
“Hey! Hey, you!”
I almost didn’t stop. I’m still not sure if I would have been better off if I just kept walking, ignoring the shout from behind me. Maybe, if I’d just turned up my collar against the chill in the air and kept on striding across the park, I wouldn’t have arrived late to my meeting. Maybe I wouldn’t have even seen that monster in the lobby, tentacles thrashing as they came rising up out of the central ornamental fountain, smashing the expensive furniture and tearing poor Tina in half…
But you can’t buy shit with wishes, as my dad used to tell me. I heard that shout from behind me, and I paused for a second, turning and glancing back over my shoulder.
Just a second. But that was enough time to get me into this mess. Continue reading
Happy Halloween!
I sat up with a gasp, my hands flying to my chest where, only moments ago, I’d felt that stunningly painful impact. I patted down my uniform, searching for the huge, bloody wound that I’d glimpsed before falling back, everything fading to black…
It wasn’t there.
My brain couldn’t quite seem to understand. But I’d been shot; I remembered it – the blow, like a punch to the chest from a boxer, knocking me back off of the front of the trench and down into its depths. I’d hit the ground hard, my limbs pointing in all directions, but somehow didn’t feel the impact. I didn’t feel anything, really; I tried to pick myself up, but my legs and arms didn’t want to move. I couldn’t even feel the rain hitting my open palms, dripping off of my fingers. I’d just lain there, staring up at the sky, blackness creeping in from the edges of my vision…
WELL, COME ALONG, THEN. THERE ISN’T TIME FOR DAWDLING. Continue reading
“Excuse me, but what’s wrong with you?”
The words came bursting out of me, errant children running ahead of an overstressed mother. I tried to grab them back, but they’d already left my tongue, out to cause trouble in the world.
And although I prayed that maybe the woman in front of me hadn’t heard me speak, I saw her shoulders stiffen – and she slowly turned around to face me.
“What?” she asked, narrowing her eyes until they reminded me of a couple little marbles pressed into the marshmallow of her face. Continue reading
“What are you waiting for? Come on down, James!” Grandma Higgins called to me, beaming from inside the center of the pitch black aura that glistened around her.
Finally, dimly, I forced my legs to continue down the stairs, carrying me towards her waiting arms. I almost expected to feel that horrible aura as I got closer, the blackness closing in and sucking me down like sticky tar.
But I didn’t, of course, and instead just got the normal smell of old person, combined with the hint of flour and the touch of starch that she used on all her clothes. She wrapped her arms around my middle, giving me a squeeze. Continue reading
I heard the sound of my mom’s footsteps on the stairs. She always acted astounded when I knew that it was her, before she even knocked on my bedroom door. I didn’t know if she truly didn’t understand that her footsteps on the creaky old wooden stairs of our family house sounded different, or if she just chose to humor me.
“James?” she called out, rapping her knuckles lightly against the other side of my bedroom door. “Listen, are you awake?”
I groaned, grabbing my pillow and squeezing it tighter against my face. I let out an indistinct grunt, hoping she’d take this as assent.
“James? Do I need to come in there? I know you’re feeling under the weather, but do you need to go to the hospital?” Continue reading
“Halcythrax, Lord of Regrets!”
Halcythrax stood up from the strangely low-slung couch in the waiting room, dropping last month’s issue of “Villains Quarterly” back down on the coffee table. He’d read the cover story, of course, covering how Aetheria, the Spider Queen, managed to bring down Lucio Light-Bringer with her carefully placed web traps. Personally, Halcythrax thought that it was just another attempt at pandering towards women in villainy, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.
Besides, Aetheria had her costume made here. No matter his personal feelings towards the Spider Queen, she did look absolutely stunning in the purple and black tights, covered in webbing and with cunningly designed pockets that somehow further accented her figure.
So as he followed the attendant down the long hallway, Halcythrax couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. He’d waited weeks for his appointment slot; Iris was notoriously difficult to book. Continue reading
“Housekeeping!”
There’s a funny thing that happens to lips after a couple thousand years.
You ready for this? They fall off.
Gross, huh? Yeah, that’s death for you. Or undeath, I guess. Except I never really understood that term, because I did die. I died, and then came back. So if I had to pick a word to use, I think I’d say re-death. Or post-death. Something like that. Continue reading
She caught me looking out the window.
All around us, everyone else seemed totally focused on the moment, the dance, the thumping bass music pumping out of the cheap, slightly tinny speakers. It was enough – almost – to drown out the sounds of an angry Nature from outside the hall, her breath howling as she mustered up her weapons to break the tenuous peace with the surface below.
She saw me looking out the window, listening less to the female singer shouting about how she needed to get up on the dance floor and more to the rolling thunder, approaching like the pounding of hooves from an onrushing stampede. She reached out, caught at my hand.
I looked up, surprised and ready to defend myself – but she just smiled, tugged me away from the dance and the other people, the sea of humanity. She led gently, but it was enough to encourage me to follow. Continue reading
Missing Brains 