Oliver sat alone at the piano nursing a snifter of scotch. He wore his nicest suit, a black Italian three-button. His tie hung loose around his neck. He knew that his attire had gone out of style long ago. His face was worn, with bags under his eyes that made him look like he had ...

Luna fussed with her hair for the hundredth time. The pair of diminutive silver barrettes she’d snagged at Al’s Emporium functioned to hold the strands out of her face, but old habits die hard. Distracted, she stepped backward and almost knocked over a display of Omarite healing crystals. Under normal circumstances, she was careful to ...

It had been six months since the dead walked out of the sea. Benjamin sat atop the rounded bluffs, made pitiful by time and the saline air. The beach, an inconsequential strip of sand not long before, was now ghostly silent. Only fading tracks and worn trails hinted at the commotion which had come and ...

Every movement is necessary for my survival; to stop, even while sleeping, would be certain death. Some can lounge along the reefs and chat amongst themselves without fear. I don’t envy nor despise them, for we all make the best of what we’re given in this strange world. Behind me, hitchers stick to my back ...

Luna paced the deck in her quarters until the hunter-green carpet turned a dusty shade of moss. The argument with Astor flickered in her mind like the light of a pulsar, its intensity re-surging as soon as it subsided. Her eyes stung with bitter tears that refused to fall. The memory of the pain plastered ...

Despite the look on Wesic’s face when Luna tossed his ship, building a case against him would be harder than making him jump at the accusation. She paced the lift on the return trip to the command center. Thus far, the evidence she’d collected was circumstantial, little better than the case some asshole could build ...

Even with Astor’s head on her shoulder and her fingers tracing post-coital patterns along her side, Luna couldn’t get Dunnagan’s stupid expression out of her mind. Inhaling the floral scent wafting off her golden waves only strengthened Luna’s conviction of her innocence, but left to the stillness of her thoughts, the irreconcilable information she’d learned ...

Memories of the previous night danced across Luna’s mind and settled in the pit of her stomach. She discovered from the station logs that there’d only been three new residents in the last month: the physician’s assistant who’d waited twelve weeks for transfer orders, an ensign assigned to the astronomy team, and Astor. The passing ...

The hard blow fell across her back from behind. “Get fucked by a Beluvian tocar!” Luna swore at the offender. Her electric orange outposter splashed down her shirt and onto the data pad she was reading. She turned to locate the dead grinter who’d doused her in her favorite beverage, only to find a trembling waitress backing away from ...

The crash is so loud; I hear it above the buzz of my kids’ electric toothbrushes.  My five-year-old Sasha gasps, sending white spittle flying in every direction. “Santa only comes if we’re asleep. Everyone, hurry!” She flings her Spider Gwen toothbrush at the mirror and runs to her bedroom. We haven’t read ‘Twas the Night Before ...