His Danger Pistol was out of bullets, his Bag of Tricks was empty, and he wasted his last can of Antimatter back at the lab. All he had was his Charm and his wits. Charm wouldn't last forever, and he'd always come up a little short in the wits department.

" . . . the government works for the aliens now, taking over the world. That's why everything's so screwed up."

Once in a while I have the time of my life / in this god-forsaken Earth:

Diane couldn’t shake her compunction. Though eight and a half months had passed, nothing felt right anymore. Their conversation played out in her dreams, and stilled her during everyday errands.

It’s possible that you’re dying. Every headache a brain tumor, your friend once said. You laughed then. Now you begin to see what he meant.

His granddaughter, Ivy, sat on his knee looking at an old photo album she found under the couch during one of her afternoon explorations. She made him wipe off the dust and cobwebs before he took her through all the pictures, per normal protocol. The albu

Excuse me, can I now ask to change my favorite childhood color from green to yellow?

Violet goes with her mother to the home, delivering cookies to old folks. She's getting to hate how she goes along with everything her mother asks. Some of her friends are rebelling already, and Violet feels something under her skin. It's still just a dark shape, lurking…

I don't have time

Her eyes still fixed on him as if to whisper her concerns of fidelity.

He stopped believing in God when he learned how balls worked. Spermatocytes turned into spermatids and spermatids turned into spermatozoa, the transition taking place in tiny loop de loops called the seminiferous tubules which contain at least three…

Once upon a time I sat in summer chairs beside cool vine walls. This was in a borough east of the major city, where families gathered in seasonal joy, by blooms fragrant, to worship the summer and its might. There is nothing diminutive about the world when one is…

The shoreline was further inland than he remembered, a good thirty feet or so since his last visit. He stood in waist deep water — the waves of the emerald green Gulf tumbling upon his pale white torso. He had always been disappointed with the beach as a child.…

The man who put up the clothes line left his kids upstairs at night and came down to my bed.

Crass, vulgar, boorish, impaired, angry, depressed, jealous, regretful.