Why can’t I be happy? No: I am happy. The day is bright and beau­ti­ful. It’s that time be­tween classes, I’m sit­ting on that bench on the grounds, the solid and com­fort­ing wood pushes back against me so strongly; the sad­ness can’t quite reach me.

“I’m…

Un­less they harm oth­ers, the Great Pro­tec­tor Lee had pro­claimed, they must be pro­tected.

But El­lie, Rose, and Lau­ren had harmed no­body.

Tim­o­thy

“No,” Tim­o­thy had told her. (he should know.) (should­n’t he?) (he told…

The walls be­tween the re­al­ity of this box and the sur­re­al­ity of my imag­i­na­tion are some­times thin, but I can­not help but imag­ine that, were I to imag­ine some­thing, I’d imag­ine some­thing else. Some­how, for all the vivid­ness of my imag­i­na­tion,…

Part three of the SANTA Triptych

Your red cloak trails through the snow be­hind you, its hood cov­er­ing your hat and ob­scur­ing your closely-trimmed beard, its long sleeves hid­ing your bare hands. Not the norm for a Santa. You sup­pose they don’t call…

Part two of the SANTA Triptych.

​The war is over. We lost. The God­less are at­tack­ing the Ark. You have to save the chil­dren. You have to raise the walls. You have to ac­ti­vate the Pole.

You step over the bod­ies of your room­mates. There will be time…

One might think, upon first glance, that Jacque­line Iskan­der is some sort of ephemeral be­ing. Known to her friends as “Jackie,” and to her en­e­mies as “Cap­tain Jack,” she seems more a force of na­ture than a hu­man be­ing. But to her “chil­dren,”—as she…

The walls be­tween the re­al­ity of my box and the sur­re­al­ity of my imag­i­na­tion are some­times thin, but I can­not help but imag­ine that, were I to imag­ine some­thing, I’d imag­ine some­thing else. Some­how, for all the vivid­ness of my imag­i­na­tion,…

I’ve heard doors slam shut in the night, and I thought, that’s quite al­right, no need to bother with a light, it’s just the air con­di­tioner or the fan, an or­di­nary thing to hap­pen nine past two at night: this night is or­di­nary, no need to fright.

But…

This is a rough story writ­ten in a cou­ple of hours. It was not per­fected af­ter thou­sands, dozens, or even more than one draft. This is a sin­gle write-through and a ba­sic proof­read.

Seven thou­sand four hun­dred eigh­teen pieces of pa­per. Stacks.…

“I have some­where to be,” whis­pers Han­nah. The dig­i­tal pur­ple eyes of the ro­bot guard hold­ing her in place slowly blink.

“There are very few peo­ple whom I al­low to hand­cuff me,” she states. “But while I am here, I will an­swer all of your ques­tions.”…