Having seen the reggaezzi perform, the righteous of Sea-john shake their heads in wonder. They will then murmur severally or as one, «Légendaire.»
Read More«Légendaire.»
The summer sky was stacking dark clouds when Pau trudged up from the concrete gullet of the parkade. Sweat stuck his shirt to the small of his back and the biolocked handle of his Ceylan Industries suitcase was slippery. Looking over the shrunken brown swatches of lawn and the acid-yellow waterstat holos glowering from apartment windows, he hoped, fervently, that the rain would fall.
Read MoreL’appel du videWillie Kennard rode into the town of Duffy dangerously late, looking back over his shoulder at the height of the sun and squinting. He dropped down from the old mare he’d borrowed off Wilson Hayes and hitched her to a post.
Read MoreSundownYou were thirty-five when you parked your pickup truck in front of that damned diner. A single poor decision that would make you hate yourself for the rest of your life. When you think back to that moment your joints hurt, your bones ache, your teeth bite into your tongue until you taste blood. In this town, even your body behaves in an unpredictable manner.
Read MoreBlack Hole Heart
The man in front of me—Winston, according to his name tag—taps at his screen with a ferocity that belies the rate of progress. He is one of a hundred desk jockeys littering the lobby of Astuna’s central spire, filling the cavernous space with busy fingers and muted conversation.
Read MoreWelcome to AstunaElena turns to look over her shoulder. The angel goes everywhere with her, like a brand. When she’s too far away Elena feels that distance like a missing tooth or a hole in the heart. Right now, she’s standing in the corner among the pile of partygoers’ shoes. Her hands are folded in front of her, barely peeking out from the hems of her robe’s long sleeves. Her hair and skin are the same silver-white as her robe, and she shines, all of her, like a beacon against the dimmed lights of the townhouse.
Read MoreElena’s Angel“I fell,” said the cyborg, and for a moment his audience stood astounded, waiting for the larger speech, the longer explanation. None came. “I fell,” he said once, and spoke no further.
Read MoreHiraeth: Tragedy in Four ActsIn the flickering amber torchlight, the mummy’s skin was burnished sienna where Jackson peeled the rotting bandages off. When Jackson pressed fore and middle fingers to the slender collarbones, the skin crinkled like tissue beneath the warmth and weight of a living body. Color bloomed through the skin and Jackson watched as one might witness a comet streaking across an otherwise dark sky; the transformation in the body was sudden and startling.
Read MoreThe Three-tongued Mummy
Parts of my arm swirled around the room, my vision scattered across a thousand panes of glass. I could see the poets clearly now, dark, unblinking eyes, toothless mouths, their gray-blue flesh seething with unattached meaning.
Read MoreHow Lovely Is the Silence of Growing Things