0 Comments
0 Shares
1 Views
0 Reviews
Directory
Discover new ideas, create new connections and make new friends
-
Please log in to like, share and comment!
-
The Pale ProtocolCould a man be wrong about the shape of his own life? I asked this on the third of November, while the frost was creeping up the windowpanes of the sleep bay at the temp agency, a place where the air tasted of stale coffee and damp wool. I was thirty-four years old, Ray Cavett, a home health aide with a student loan that felt heavier than the body I carried, and I was trying to decide if I...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Distant MachineThe silver case of the pocket watch was warm in Elias Thorne’s hand, a small, heavy thing that smelled faintly of oil and old sweat. He held it up to the grey light of the window, turning the crown with a thumb that had lost its steadiness. It was a Tuesday in November, 1912, and the rent for the upper floor of the tenement on Holloway Street was due in three days. Elias needed eight pounds,...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden VisitThe pen hovered over the ledger, its tip dry, a sliver of graphite suspended in the stale air of the archive room. Elias Thorne, fifty-two years old and thirty years into a career of preserving other people’s histories, traced the water stain that bloomed across the page like a bruise under skin. It was a Tuesday, and the November light through the high windows was thin and grey, offering no...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Pale BonsaiThe rain in the courtyard of the Bureau of Anomalous Records did not fall so much as it was pressed down by the weight of the sky, a cold, gray sheet that turned the concrete into a slick, reflective black. Sergeant Elias Thorne stood beneath the eaves of the administrative wing, his forty-two-year-old body stiff with a pain that had nothing to do with the damp, clutching a pale bonsai tree...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded QuadrantMori Haruto’s name is on the manifest, written in ink that has dried brown, and I remember the smell of ozone before I saw the light, the sharp, metallic tang that coats the back of the throat like blood. I was thirty-two, a spotter for orbital debris, and I wanted the promotion to Foreman so I could pay the vet at the rendering plant for my father’s final months. The Faded Quadrant was a...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Pale DanceEugene Tillman’s hand shook as he dipped the quill, the ink heavy and black against the pale vellum. He was thirty-two, a scribe in the back room of Lord Vane’s manor, and he wanted only to copy the final page of his dying wife’s journal to secure their child’s inheritance. What stood against him was the Pale Mark, a recurring ink stain that appeared on parchment only when Eugene lied. He had...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden DowntownAct I Duncan Cameron had worked as a tax collector for the parish on the Isle of Skye for twenty-two years, and in that time he had never once failed to pay the tithe on his own barley, no matter how thin the harvest. He sat on the edge of the narrow bed in the caravanserai, the smell of damp wool and stale smoke heavy in the air, and watched his left hand rest on the blanket. In the dream that...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Wistful CampusThe letter lay on the oak table, its edges already curling in the dry heat of the scriptorium. Elara read the name *M. Ashworth* at the top, then her own, *E. Vane*, written in a hand that trembled slightly, as if the writer had been cold. The body of the note was brief, a bureaucratic dismissal of her previous tenure at the university library, citing "incompatibility with institutional...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded ShieldSantiago Uribe, thirty-two, a senior inspector in the Imperial Court’s Security Bureau, wanted to secure his pension by retiring before the winter solstice. The heat was a physical fact, a wall of dry air that pressed against the shutters of the vestry, making the dust in the beam of light look like suspended gold. I counted the days on my fingers, the calluses from twenty years of service...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
Arabic
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Deutsch
Turkish
Dutch
Italiano
Russian
Romaian
Portuguese (Brazil)
Greek