Nullity, lethe, preoccupy. And fear comes over me. Heavy shadows slipping from corners, quickly sliding, cover my face. A thick blanket falls and suffocates. Shadows of death, everywhere, leave…
Science Fiction
No Virtue in Virtuality
A croc exhaled at a nearby table, streaming a rainbow mist worthy of a Lucky Charms cereal box. A feathered woman sat next to me, close enough to scrape my…
Number One With a Bullet
Introduction In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake declares that “as the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell show the nature…
Honeysuckle
2045: Old Man, Summer Night Turnersburg, Friday night in June. Most folks home devicing the local news, local meaning Fairview, the larger statezone fifty kilometers up Route 063, where the…
Ms. Direction
Sitting in his car parked on the street, Josh Germaine stared up at the yellow light that spilled through the sliding glass door onto the balcony of his third-story apartment. “I oughta go up there,” he muttered to himself, “make sure that bitch doesn’t take off with more of my stuff.”
Down Bound Train
Ran got up from her seat and led me back to the cabin. Our cabin. As soon as the door was locked, she took off my collar.
My Summer Vacation in 1911
How could I have forgotten that this was the very night Picasso and Apollinaire would be arrested for stealing the Mona Lisa?
My Audrey
If I’d not been the old-fashioned sort, choosing to wait before having my Audrey move in with me, unlike a lot of men, I wouldn’t have been so wrong-footed by her that night. I’d have watched her getting ready in our home, naturally, and questioned her about a few details of her accoutrement before we went out for the evening — and thus been somewhat prepared for her later behaviour.
A Different Kind of Lullaby
Earth is a distant speck left behind in the vastness outside. A world on the furthest edge of my memory. A dream I sometimes think of in this eternal, lonely night. At times, I wonder if it’s not only a figment of my own imagination. Was there ever such a place? Were there ever blue skies and green trees and busy cities? Was there ever the sleepy village where I was born, with its crumbling church and cosy houses and the quaint pub where they celebrated my future mission a month before launching into space?
The Physical Impossibility of British Art
London lay drowned beneath an ocean. A deep, dark ocean navigated by monied corporate leviathans, the City quailing beneath. Pulled in their wake were the hackers, hook-ups and the vacant. Criss-crossing London, invisibly, was all this – information. People, things and sex, all matter and action alike reduced to drops of data. An unseen sea, one that had no end, of money, services, and the surveilled.