“So you’re a chef,” the huntress said, after she’d saved the day, “and you’re out here to hunt and cook a dragon?” “Yes?” Kee picked leaves off her muddied pants, a futile gesture. The huntress stared at her with a slight frown. She was compact, shaved hairless, brown-skinned, and wore Easterner boiled leather armour, dotted […]
The precinct’s interrogation room had the same atmosphere as all such rooms: stale coffee mixed with flop sweat and the tang of blood. There were no windows, and the cliched one-way mirror was replaced by hologram cameras that transmitted an exact 3D replica of proceedings into a room of detectives and lawyers. But the single […]
The Miller Diaries Author(s): Donna K. Gibson Source: Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 123, No. 4 (Winter, 2069), pp. 223-242 Published by: University of New Mexico The following are excerpts from the diary of Elias J. Miller, a previously unknown member of the ill-fated Donner Party. Donated to the National Historical Society earlier this year, […]
October. Our animals, they know. Way before we do. Ever since we entered the Zone of Exclusion, she’s been uneasy. For me, it’s paradise. No people. Stores full of stuff. Apartment doors standing open, radios still on. One morning months ago a caravan of trucks showed up, ordering everybody out of a two-hundred-kilometer circle of […]
The year is 2069. Rumors of monsters haunt three abandoned islands in the Pacific Ocean. Surrounded by dangerous waters from which visitors are warned away, few have dared visit and fewer still have returned to tell the tale. The three islands, linked via now-decrepit tunnels and bridges, were intended to create and experiment on DINOSAURS. […]
I am hunting for my lover’s bones in the desert. Proper women do not splay out their legs, but there’s no sitting side-saddle on a Mongolian camel. My skirts are hitched high up my knees, but I am at an age where men won’t look twice at a bare stretch of calf or pale flash […]
Your boyfriend is lying on the bed, flushed, with his shirt unbuttoned and his skirt pushed up over his thighs when he asks, “Do you want to pick, tonight?” The question knocks you off balance like a strong wind blowing so quickly by, you can’t breathe—and, for a moment, you can’t. Deep yearning lingers in […]
Authors Note: Where Garamond and Agency fonts are used, in italics, they are meant to represent American Sign Language. Where dialogue tags are used, it is meant to indicate orally spoken English. When I decided to study paleontology in college and graduate school, it was because the world of bones is silent. It was because […]
The first time I see her, it’s just a glimpse. I’m standing in the inn’s common room and the other warriors straddle chairs and call for ale. While some reach for a serving wench or boy, cheeks to pinch, a life to grasp—my stomach growls a monster’s growl. I should be slain; the growl is […]
Liverpool, Midsummer, 1763 When Satan himself came to Lolly, she didn’t recognize him. She wasn’t on her guard—hadn’t been for years. Why should she be? Her immortal soul had long since drowned in rum and rotted under gobs of treacle toffee. If any scrap was left, it was too dry and leathery to tempt evil. […]