The Phantom Frigate
by Eric Del Carlo | 2,346 words

A giant carrot walked into the bar. No, this isn’t the start of some joke. It glanced around, spotted me and Hitchcock drinking beers, and headed for our table.

“Is this the guy?” Hitch asked anxiously. Anxiety was pretty much his default emotional mode.

“No,” I said, setting down my Bongo Boy. “I’m sure it’s some other Purturalii who just wants an autograph.”

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Fame
by Michaele Jordan | 6,007 words

David Atchinson scanned the test scores. His own grade, he barely noticed, was a 97. He did, however, observe that his classmates’ grades ranged from 58 to 96. Nearing the bottom of the list, he prepared to heave of sigh of self-congratulation. His eye lit briefly on the third name from the last, and swept on triumphantly to the end. Then, with a sickening double take, he backtracked to Younger, S. – 97.

He pondered Younger, S. at some length, trying to recall who that was.

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Download
by Gunnar De Winter | 2,012 words

So, this is how death feels. The last moment has arrived. The final breath. Hopefully, my precautions will have been worth it. And then there is darkness.

Until the drum of life begins its concerto once more. Bombom… Bombom… Bombom… Slithers of thought flicker in and out of existence. As time passes, these slithers slow down and congeal, eventually forming precursors to cognition. Slowly, awareness and sentience return. The memories find their way back home. I remember dying. I remember having my personality, my complete identity, uploaded into the virtual storage. I remember being one of the few who could afford it. I remember my father’s ultimate death, forever perishing from existence. I remember swearing it wouldn’t happen to me.

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Krieger
by Michael Hodges | 4,379 words

The woman opened her mouth to a degree human mouths shouldn’t open. Her eyeballs bulged, no longer containing the aura of a living human being. Rin watched the protest sign she was carrying clatter to the filthy concrete.

Something cracked. Maybe the woman’s jaw.

Screams surrounded him. The woman’s blonde hair writhed on her head, all of it bunching up and coming to a point. The air crackled above her.

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