Matthew Melmon
Bio
Sold EA stock too soon. Left Apple too soon. Started personalized music service... Dot Com pop. Events discovery. Nope. Video. Nope. Solar panels. DiFi. Personal growth non-profit. All nope. The Beatles got it right: write paperbacks.
Stories (7/0)
Daphne
A sound squealed around the inside Sifentir’s skull like a drunk mosquito. Ignoring it as best he could, the dragon exhaled a cloud into calm afternoon skies. Teasing the puff with his wings, he shaped it into a castle fit for a countess with plenty of skeletons in her closets. Sif had four wings, like a butterfly. Unlike a butterfly, his stretched twenty yards to either side. With another exhalation (and several twirls of his long tail), Sif wrapped the castle in fairy bridges – and connected them to a drifting, magical city. Leaning beams of sunlight dusted everything salmon orange. After many moments admiring his work, Sif identified the right spot to exhale a cathedral. He drew in a breath.
By Matthew Melmon2 years ago in Fiction
Tikal Aleph
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Rain conceded that they did say that. Hurtling toward the surface of an icy moon orbiting a gas giant seventy thousand light years from home, however, she wasn’t so sure. Screams were shockwaves traveling through a gaseous medium, or something like that. The denser the medium, the faster the scream traveled. Or maybe it was louder – or it was both faster and louder. Either way, space was not dense and therefore no shockwaves.
By Matthew Melmon2 years ago in Fiction
Mirage
In the beginning there was emptiness. Two dozen heads-up layers blinked “running diagnostics” all at once. Diagnostics were great, thought Adrian, but he needed his eyes. Ears would also be helpful. At least the feels were back online. No part of his overengineered body felt good. Mirage filaments were stitching things back together as best they could, but there was a lot to stitch. Gyros informed Adrian he was moving a hundred kilometers an hour in one direction – and bouncing around in the others.
By Matthew Melmon2 years ago in Fiction
Folly
The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Its flame leaned into another wick. Fire spread. Wax dripped. Sebastian Rudolph Harold knew men his size shouldn’t snicker. The wrestler was a slab of Ivy League beefcake six and a half feet tall. He snickered anyway.
By Matthew Melmon2 years ago in Fiction
Summer Tastes Like Granite
Drop a fluffy slice of continental shelf on a plate of oceanic crust. Add water. Subduct. Be advised episodes of extreme shaking will periodically occur. If near the coast during a full rip of the subduction boundary, drop everything, pick up the kids and pets, move to high ground, hold on to something that won’t fall on you, and remain calm. The shaking will pass ( so will aftershocks, eventually).
By Matthew Melmon2 years ago in Earth
Aomori-ni-Murasaki
One side argues a shadowy group of omniscient lizards controls all actions on the world stage. The other side counters with snake people. Both are close enough as far as either takes it. But I’m here to tell you the global over-undermind injects thoughts into every head - including the heads of illuminated reptilian templars who bury gold beside biblical treasures in remote locations known only to experts hired by cable television production studios.
By Matthew Melmon2 years ago in Confessions
The Serpent Of Pankow
There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. There weren’t always demons in the sky. There was a time when giants walked on land as well as across the bottom of the sea, and fey minstrels had not always danced around old trunks in dark forests. According to Geomancer Sect, the Meng Fanxi floodplain hadn't even always been a valley - but that was going too far back for Kang Ahn. In the then and there of a presently humid evening, ripples pulled into a saurian hump behind the aristocrat’s weathered gondola. Scales glistened briefly in the setting sun, and the creature submerged.
By Matthew Melmon2 years ago in Fiction
