—Begin Log, K-1217, 2014 Years After The Fifth Flood—

Static bubbled somewhere behind my eyes as I carved out the hole in the wooden number six. Teacher, trying to get me to Telepath again. I scratched my ear and hummed. The static went away. I finished my clock and looked it over. I’d failed every other test assessing which of us atypical Koinos could handle cognition-enhancing medication. This time, I’d make them notice.

Released: September 15th, 2021

Originally published in Hobart.

I saw myself on the Jumbotron. Locked eyes on my eyes looking elsewhere. It was that moment before you recognize that it is you, in fact, staring at you. Before you think, Look at that. That’s Me.

Released: October 15th, 2021

Halloween Bonus!

Originally Published in Nightmare.

They’d spent two years on this journey. First there was leaving St. Thomas on a small rusting dinghy with a bad motor; they had barely survived the trip to Florida. Then it was highways stretching up the east coast, spotted with migrants. Then winding back roads overgrown with weeds. And through snow: slick with cold rain, or knee high, or hard and crunchy under their feet. They hunted and scavenged and stole what they could. There were close calls with grisly men and people that had succumbed to madness, their mouths frothing, their eyes full of rage. Her father had to use his gun. They were out of bullets.

Released: October 29th, 2021

What’s strange is that there's no origin post coining the term “Simulacrum.” The concept exists without a referent, rules for the entity sprouting up like mushrooms, simultaneous. The earliest reference occurs over six years after the launch of the site.

Released: November 15th, 2021

The universe flashes a blinding lemon yellow and it feels like something sucks the air out of my lungs, then I’m tripping over my original size eight-and-a-half feet and nearly wipe out on the gravel path. But I stay upright. I’m getting better at these transitions—I have scars on my knees from previous trips. It’s worth it, though. Who else has seen the ice cities of some alternate reality version of Brazil or the swinging carousels in that world where gravity is optional?

Released: December 15th, 2021

Shara never believed in the gods of her grandparents, and this new one seemed even more unlikely. But the Roamers of Tala had answers to explain what happened to wayfarers. The sibyl said that Shara visited a world where life had sped up and shot outward like the earthen blast from a lightning strike. And that lightning had been harnessed in the same way as water in their own world, and there were wheels to run it through its courses inside ships that fly and poke holes through the firmament to land wherever and whenever they want, and she said that somehow Shara was blessed, allowed to visit that impossible new world. A storm paw knot was all she’d needed.

Released: January 15th, 2022

New Year Bonus!

Originally published in Raleigh Review and Winner of Best of the Net.

Leary’s high already. “I’m writing something,” he says to me.

“You write?”

“Not yet. Anyway, tell me what you think. Ok, so there’s this guy. He’s a low-level fellow for a company, bottom of the barrel, right. You like sci-fi?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Good. So this fellow’s bad-off looking, real pale. He’s always tired, and skinny as hell. Guess why.”

Released: January 25th, 2022

Inside, the Spotted Death was worse than she could’ve believed. How many infected lived here and how many more would be sent to Rotton before the disease was finally stopped? If it ever was. Isolated cases still broke out beyond quarantine. She tied the cloth mask tight over her mouth and nose. They said it could get in through the breath, that wisps of sickness could travel through the air and anchor into your body, spreading out like the sand. If those dull, blue spots—like tiny bruises—started showing on her skin there would be no leaving Rotton. Only the foolish still clung to the hope of a cure.

Released: February 15th, 2022

It always starts the same: a gasp and then memories. A life he hasn’t lived but now, suddenly, has. There is confusion, yes, often, but also exhilaration, as though he has suddenly recollected something he has long sought to recall. It is a life’s worth of recollections, a life’s worth of pleasures and pains and novelty. Is Emïel a little addicted to traveling between worlds? Yes, perhaps he is.

Released: March 15th, 2022

Maura’s baby began vanishing on the fourth day of his life. Philip was born at 4:43am on a Wednesday, and on Friday, despite Maura’s and her husband Roger’s insistence that they were in no way equipped to care for the child (they weren’t, of course; no one is. They were equipped in the physical sense: a crib, pacifiers, a rocking chair, a whimsically-decorated walk-in closet that they converted into a surprisingly spacious nursery next to their bedroom.

Released: April 15th, 2022