Colonel Bridges laid my first brick; he slathered the first layer of mortar. To that mortar he added a strong dose of his spittle. From there I rose over the city of Jackson, absorbing it into myself until I became the city, serving to lift the effluence from the works below into the heavens above.
Domestic optimization was the norm. Doubtless the digital annulment date was preset, with the standard option to revoke if both parties agreed. Counselors would be notified and the newly decoupled would be placed back on the affinity market, with their newly developed partner preference tastes biometrically optimized.
In my line of work, you see every kind of person there is. The overly dramatic, who’d jump in after the casket if no one watched them close. The screamers, who wailed and spoke to God as if He were an old drinking mate. The stern-faced uncles and hollow-faced aunts. The confused little kids wondering what all the fuss was about. The close relatives with dazed looks, wearing the expressions of…
Her grandmother's house was not all she imagined it would be. It was more. A duplex adorned with wisteria, and a backyard that boasted a cornucopia of different flowers. She became a butterfly of homosapien descent, and paid visits to the flowers on a daily basis.
Over the years, she learned the patterns. The steps were loudest when she was afraid. They quickened when she was about to make a decision she would regret.
People paced about, and it wasn’t long before police and medical staff were on the scene. People poured out of the hospital's main entrance and surrounded us. It wasn’t long before I found myself on a trolley being moved through the hospital. An oxygen mask went over my face, and I found myself taking deep gasps.
"I know darling. You'd let the world burn for me. But I don't want you to. Please. Please." "Why?" Why would she want to die? I held her face gently. She leaned into my touch.
Logically, he knew everything that was in that closet. Everything that was on the floor in the shadow where the night light didn’t touch. He knew every inch of that laminate flooring leading to that closet. His window was locked. The front and back door were locked. His mom was fast asleep just down the hallway. All he had to do was stand up and shut it, then he could get back to sleep and not…
Alien vampires, trapped in a time warp, find themselves being hunted by an immortal assassin of their own creation. Guided by the will of the erased tree god, a warrior who should have never existed emerges in a world he no longer recognizes. A Centurion races against time to save her brother from a dying world, but the only man who could unlock the cosmic prison was buried alive two hundred years…
I called her two days before they ruled her death in the death certificate, and she didn’t answer, but I didn’t think much of it. I guessed I would try again some weeks later, eventually. The neighbors called the police when they smelled the rot.