Winter 2012

The blonde girl’s dead face mushroomed in my camera lens. The blood from her head pooled quickly in the floor of the bathroom, but there wasn’t anything I could do for her now. Nothing but shoot…

It was early July when the signs assaulted the small town of Owln’s Malt. Unassuming pasteboard squares, they advertised a debate for Bill 41D on the last of the month, to be held at the fairgrounds. The signs had been noted by the authorities because there was no such bill, nor a permit to use the fairgrounds…

This artifact I won in the Tepheli campaign. The Tephei were an ugly people — the universe is no poorer for their absence — but they could create art…

Regarding them with his dark eyes, his skin an unreal shade of red-brown that blended perfectly with Marrakech’s mud bricks. He had to be real because his smell, something masculine and exotic, cut through the aroma of sweat, cardamom, and steaming hot mint pervading the outdoor café at the edge of the bustling souk where they stood waiting for a table…

The normal sounds of the forest — the screams of creatures as they whistled, sang, snarled, quarreled, hissed, roared, and killed each other — were gone, and they left behind an emptiness that bored on Bernhard’s senses and gnawed on his mind…

Archibald Smithe rubbed the empty socket under his eye patch. It was bad enough having his good eye watering up on him, but these phantom allergies were about to drive him to mutiny….

The Priest is visibly sweating, stuttering his sermon on the Gadarene Swine. He’s new. This is his first tenth solstice and he knows his sermon means nothing to us but doesn’t understand why…

She was off then, running into the dark wood, Adam close behind her. At the peak of the first rise a fallen oak blocked the path, and she angled off right, down the knoll through the wild grass, and then she darted across the creek, toes dancing along the dark, polished stones…

“Stopping Motion” by Hal Sirowitz

“POV” by Patrick Sugrue

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