Brain Man

gadget

"I'm sorry, Ms. Cochrane. The brain damage is irreversible. Your son has suffered permanent memory loss." The surgeon didn't bother to comfort the distraught mother. Instead, he spun sharply about and briskly left the family waiting room. "That's one cold fish, ma'am, but he's the best they got here at Mercy General. So, if he ... Read more

The Last Supper

Egg

If it hadn't been for the extended quarantine, I'd have never finally found Charlie in the freezer. Six years ago, my youngest thought it would be a blast to hide an Easter egg behind the bags of peas and corn. It was his turn to be the Egg Master, as we called the person who ... Read more

Dry Spell

Lady Of The Lake

Merlin wanted no part of Vivienne's artifice. Alas, in this domain of predestination, he was powerless to do anything other than to expose his innermost secrets to the one woman who could turn his magic mirror against him, using it like the shield of Perseus. Fortunately, predestiny also showed him the path toward mutually assured ... Read more

The World-wide Eruv

Screak

By the year 2345 A.D., the global infrastructure formerly known as the Internet has shed its status as an ethereal being. Its only connection to its past lies in the definition of the word formed by its acronym, S.C.R.E.A.K., a noun describing a noise like a banshee. In prehistoric times, the "Internet" was summoned by ... Read more

The Oxymoronic Hydroponic Tubers

Copyright © by Mitchell Allen Angela was about to get her ashes hauled by Liam Moore. She didn't know this, because it hadn't happened yet. In fact, young Liam wasn't even born yet. None of this matters, because the fact is, if Angela hadn't met Foley in the mail room on that fateful day, she ... Read more

Extra-Savory Perceptions

Ancient humans, the ones that literally swam from the primordial ooze, had a myriad of senses. Frances Van Atheris, a renown genomic biologist, set out to catalogue all 10,000 of them. She based her work on the Human Genome Project, taking her data from the so-called junk DNA that was isolated from stable gene deserts. ... Read more

My Neighbor's Yard

Myneighborsyard

To the casual observer, Jacob Jr. was just a kid galumphing through puddles in his galoshes. But, I knew better. I had seen Jacob Jr. and his "family" snacking on the toxic blooms that had overtaken their fenced-in yard. Also, once a month, the elder Jacob took a baseball bat to a hapless chick, after ... Read more

Pandora's Pillbox

Pandoras Pillbox500x627

Gerrie Shamba, Keeper of The Pandora Pillbox, shimmered into Siberia on June 29th, 1908. She removed the time-traveling hat from her head, reached into it and withdrew a handful of infected ticks. She sprinkled them onto the ground before returning the hat to her head. In twelve hours, an asteroid would explode over the region ... Read more