Bring your own salt.

The driverless car drives itself to the hosp—to the Medical Facility. Come on, Max . “You’ve been reading too much.” Cathy. Cathy is my wife and I love her. “Mmm.” “Hello in there—Max? You. Reading. Too much. Again.” I put my book down and I look sideways at her. She’s reclining in the passenger seat next to me. She is my wife and I love her. “I’m reading about Earth.” She scoffs. “Max. Come on. It’s not real.” “What do you mean?” I slide my hand under her hand on her stomach. “It’s not real, that.” She gestures. “What’s real is this.” She squeezes. “Here. Now. Us.” Under my palm I feel the material, the cool synth without texture. What she wants me to feel is the warmth of her skin beneath the lifeless synth and also the life we’ve made together. I think. But what I feel is…well, an entirely a different matter. “You keep reading about the Earth but this isn’t the Earth. It isn’t real. Not to us.” She is, of course, pushing my buttons. I know this. It is understandable. My hand is on ...

 I can’t breathe. How much longer. Do it. Heart slams so hard against my insides surely it hears me. At the dim end of the rotting structure it stands dead still. One leg suspended. Ears twitch, looking right at me. Long eyelashes. Big, animal eye. I’m in it. Mal’s not, and she has the gun. Do it. Shootititdoesn’tknowgodIhavetobrea– The silence explodes. A streak in the dimness. Blink. It’s gone. Just like that. Blink. Head ringing with the report. Behind the shattered glass the rifle barrel angles down and there is her ghost face framed in the window. Dart forward eagerly. Maybe she hit it. Little knot of hope. Hunched over where the animal was. Maybe there’s blood. Back and forth in a grid. End where its horns tore through the tumbled slats. Maybe there’s a drop. “Stop it.” Mal’s behind me. Stiff. Gun barrel across her hips. “What if you wounded it.” Squinting into the shadows and the clutter on the floor. “No." A drop. That’s all. Anything. Nothing. ...

I haven't seen an animal in days. Even the birds are still, and flit from view before I register them. Sometimes a high branch quivers with the ghost of one. What has happened here? What does the forest remember? Some horror, up ahead. Anything. Anything's better than the crushing silence. Bring on the blood rust abattoirs. Bring on the meat eaters. The long empty between rigid pine trunks. Ears prickle at the softest sounds, the rustle of my coat, the hint of footpresses on the needles in thick brown layers. Nothing moves. I cough and I scare myself shitless the sound it's like a gunshot. When my heart settles I find I'm still walking. Still in this eternity. Nothing moves. The wind is dead. Hell's supposed to be a fiery pit of endless torture. But I read once that hell is nothingness. I remember; a short bark of laughter when I read that. I’ll take numb over pain thank-you-very-much. Didn't understand. Now I understand. Hell. The  fo...

A woman picked her way across the reeking ruin, gagging, stumbling over flesh and metal, until she sank down beside the armless remains of a young man. His face was somehow spotless amid the filth, and twisted into a rigid degree of agony no poet or painting could ever fully convey. The woman cradled him. She began rocking back and forth, staring transfixed into that death mask. Blood seeped into her robes. The pure horror of his glassy eyes stained her soul more deeply than blood ever could. He stood apart, looking down on it all from the commander’s hill, and he could so easily tell what her dumbstruck face was speaking: why, why, why ...her question came to him clearly, for it echoed the one trapped within himself. For I – I caused her love's death , he knew. Once he could, yet now he could not answer any more the why which made this happen. To what end? he thought. But does it even matter, the ends, can any end stand up to the horror of such means? He wanted ...

The waters lapped at Hectar’s bare feet. He sat on the edge of the bustling pier, legs dangling into the River Yp, the setting sunbeams finding the creases in his furrowed brow. About him scurried rough, rural folk; villagers who straddled the divide between the Fahmal’s western edge and Yptah’s eastern border. He paid them no heed. His eyes were closed. Ageless waters, you who have washed away secrets, so many… He felt the dirt on his feet, the crusted lattice set along his sandals’ ridges, felt it soften to mud, drift free. First River, you would wash away the stains of my long travels. For this I am grateful. Do you perchance have the power to free me of the time before that, from which I still fly; to wash the stains from man’s memory? Surely, surely, given time enough… All our endless choices, running together, the flow of who we are now, of who we become. Now…now is determined by choices past. Now, here I stand at journey’s end. Truly, there is but one Eterna...