Adventure
Parallax Unbound
By Aly De Angelus and Robert Haynes Toni’s chest heaved under the weight of the rubble. Each labored breath ignited a furious cough, while the settling dust and ash caked dry the tears on her cheeks. She felt the warmth of blood on her leg as she sat up and looked around.
By Aly De Angelus3 years ago in Fiction
The Collector
FINNEAS “Wealth, devourer of man,” Finneas echoed, “carrier of chaos.” His eager eyes darted across the newly formed chapel, a mass of mud and brick. Paranoia had begun to set in. His expression would’ve raised questions, if not for the protruding scar that attracted the majority of speculation.
By Taylor Dylan Smith3 years ago in Fiction
Fading Memories
Garrett Flynn, after surviving unfathomable odds and living a miraculous life for 87 years, was dying. As he lay in bed, covered by his tattered, sweat soaked flannel nightshirt, breathing noisily, he slowly gazed around the room, barely able to discern the figures surrounding him. The beeping of the monitors in the sterilized room were the only discernable sounds beyond his labored breathing. His disheveled appearance, dried split lips, whiskered face, and unwashed white hair contrasted sharply with the starched linen pillowcase and the antiseptic environment he was in at the military hospital.
By Rodney Davis3 years ago in Fiction
The New Ecology of Forest Clemons
The New Ecology of Forest Clemons day... Tuesday, June 28th 2112 1:17 p.m. The air humid, annoyingly warm. Dark gray hearted clouds hung low, moving fast over our, empty, almost lifless, now quiet town. The sky a bright blue over our heads, faded-out into the summer air; where at the horizon thunderheads rested in a haze of baby blues and soft pinks.
By Armando H.3 years ago in Fiction
The Old World
I often imagine what the world looked like before it became dull and lifeless. I’ve heard the stories of thriving cities, colorful cultures, and lovely people that succeed in a working environment. I often stay up wondering what my life would have been like if I was born in a different time. Would I be happy? Would I not feel suffocated? Forced by a society that dictates what we eat, what we do, and how we feel?
By Jordan Largey3 years ago in Fiction
From The Past, A Vicious Maw
Flames gulped with avarice at their meal of wood and kindling. Smoke trailed into the blighted, starless night. The firelight illuminated the pages of a psychology textbook Nora had recovered from the charred bones of a university library. Miraculously, the book had hidden unscathed beneath the rubble. And when she’d found it amidst the wreck, she saw herself in the browned pages. Both of them were lone survivors in a sea of ash.
By Alex Buscemi3 years ago in Fiction
A Fruitless Venture
One of the man’s favorite toys as a child were those View-Masters where you look into the eyepiece and click through 3-D images on a cardboard disc. He found one not too long ago rummaging through the remnants of a thrift store. Disappointingly, there was nothing left of traditional value, but as he made his way back out of the building, the red plastic of the toy caught his eye. Discarded on the ground to collect dust, there must have been countless people before him who passed it over. He stooped down and picked it up. With a silent prayer that the toy still held a disc, he looked through the viewfinder. To his quiet delight, he was treated to a look at New Orleans, the old New Orleans. He chuckled as he remembered a college trip where he got sick on beignets and daiquiris. As he clicked through the disc, he allowed himself to be transported to this tiny world, and for a short while he escaped the current reality that gripped his every thought and action. He lost track of how many times he cycled through the precious paper disc before tearing himself away. He considered taking the View-Master with him but ultimately set it back down in the dust it came from. He hoped it could provide that temporary escape for the next passerby. Perhaps that was what the last person had done for him.
By Lauren Spratt3 years ago in Fiction
Burning sun
It's been 5 years since the “end”. Unlike what you see in movies, there is not just one day that automatically ends the world. No. It’s a progression through time that will slowly kill the planet you're on. Especially when it’s not being taken care of. But the time was around five years ago when it got really bad. The sun got progressively warmer. It used to just be a few degrees every few years or even months. But that only lasted seven years. After that, the world started to reach new record highs every week. It became so bad that people couldn’t spend more than a minute or two in the sun without getting second degree burns. It didn’t matter where you were at anymore, you were hot. The places that never had heat were the first one’s to die off. They had little supplies and their bodies didn’t have time to adapt to the sudden changes. After that, there was madness. Seeing people actually die from something you did nothing to avoid probably was scary for most. But for me, I knew this was coming. I would say that my whole generation knew. Most of us were old enough to see what was happening but too young to actually do anything about it. And here we are stuck with the consequences of someone else.
By Sarah Scheiman 3 years ago in Fiction