I remember the first time Beckett showed me the prototype. I met him in the parking lot of a Starbucks on Parker. He unloaded the garish thing from the bed of his truck, and I helped him lower it to the pavement. A couple entering Starbucks pointed and laughed at us before the door closed… Continue reading The Low Probability Bike
Category: science fiction
Wormhole
The exterminator wipes his brow, pockets his grease-stained handkerchief, and checks his tablet again. “Yeah. We don’t see a lot of these. If I’m honest, they told us about these in class, but I swore the instructor was pulling our legs. Pranking us. You know? That it was a joke to see which of us… Continue reading Wormhole
Mr. Auk
June 2022 Flash Challenge, Day 14 The people of the earth collectively pause whatever they’re doing and shift their attention to the solemn ceremony. Today it is Mr. Auk, a retired fisherman in Thailand. Who knows where it will be (or IF it will be) next month. The sleeping wake in time to watch. A… Continue reading Mr. Auk
Rapid Transport
June 2022 Flash Challenge, Day 13 The smell of falafel is always the first thing I notice in the Cairo terminal; recirculated air is laden with the scents of parsley, mint, cilantro, and garlic. The bustling hallways of disembarking passengers and the vendors selling their falafel, hummus, and baklava. I woke on a sleeping couch… Continue reading Rapid Transport
Glitch Mendelsohn
June 2022 Flash Challenge, Day 9 I hurry my pace and steal a glance behind me. Damn it. They’re still there, the three teenage boys following me. Again, I allowed myself to forget that I’m an eighteen-year-old girl. What is my name this time? The body might be 18, but its rider is much older.… Continue reading Glitch Mendelsohn
Leaving the Cul-de-Sac
Escaping my sanctuary I glance out the window by my reading chair and my eye floats to the end of the street where the long flatbed truck lays on its side and to the ruined minivan that sits flush against it, gently touching bumpers and the sun sparkling on the dewy grass and… Continue reading Leaving the Cul-de-Sac
Buster’s Business
30-Day Flash Challenge, Day 23 At first, I had thought gravity stopped working. Slowly the details of what had happened come into focus. I was driving, and then my truck became airborne; I remember screams, pumping the brakes, then landing with a crash, and then? I must have blacked out. When I came to, I… Continue reading Buster’s Business
Mr. Bojangles
30-Day Flash Challenge, Day 21 “We got another two reports, like yesterday, Sheriff,” Suzy says. “Give me a second here, Suz. I’m not even in the door yet,” I say, shaking the snow off my coat. There go my dreams for a slow, uneventful day. This town is nothing once the college kids… Continue reading Mr. Bojangles
Amina’s Birth-Tattoo
30-Day Flash Challenge, Day 17 February 28, 2195 Ultimately everyone on station Magellan had to pull a tour of duty on earth. During the lottery, Amina drew an eighteen-month assignment to NorCon Station 7. Situated in Antarctica, Station 7 sat at one of the harshest climates on earth. When she got her job… Continue reading Amina’s Birth-Tattoo
Amina
30-Day Flash Challenge, Day 17 February 28, 2195 Ultimately everyone on Magellan had to pull a tour of duty somewhere on earth. The administrators liked to pretend that it wasn’t mandatory, but it was. During the annual lottery, Amina drew an eighteen lunar cycle stint at NorCon Station 7. Situated in Antarctica, Station… Continue reading Amina
The In Betweeners
30-Day Flash Challenge, Day 15 The problem with disguising interdimensional portals as a door or window is eventually some busybody will try to pass through it. Then the gig is, as they theatrically say, up. T. S. Livingstone, Memoirs of a Traveller Margaux and Philippe were thrilled with their new house. She was his mother;… Continue reading The In Betweeners
Mirrors 3
30-Day Flash Challenge, Day 13 Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?) Walt Whitman, A Hand-Mirror At first, it was just a campaign of rumors. At least that’s what most folks told themselves. Some misinformation spread for some reason or another. But then, after enough… Continue reading Mirrors 3
The Mars Option
30-Day Flash Challenge, Day 12 Lieutenant Commander Sheila Sykes squeezes herself into the tiny Martian cavern. Technically she is breaking protocol with this unaccompanied entry, but she has a hunch. The rock in front of the cave had seemed an unlikely coincidence. It looked way too circular, uniform, evenly shaped to be a random occurrence.… Continue reading The Mars Option
On the Lam
30-Day Flash Challenge, Day 11 This is the third installment in this story Finding the Glasses Around the Fold I make it to Gstaad before being captured. But it’s not one of Bobby’s goons that catches me. It is the entity that left me the four-dimensional sunglasses. I felt jerked sideways as in… Continue reading On the Lam
Finding the Glasses
30-Day Flash Challenge, Day 6 It was the peyote that finally pushed me over the edge and showed me how to move around the fold. I had been riding the yellow dragon for months in an attempt to visualize the fourth dimension. A two-dimensional being lives, sleeps, eats, fucks, and dies in a… Continue reading Finding the Glasses
Empty Garden
A man wakes in an apartment covered with notes. INTRODUCTION As usual, it takes the man nearly 30 minutes to panic. By then, he has noticed the signs and notes. His apartment walls are covered with them, hundreds if not thousands of short and not so short messages to him. Somehow he intuits that he… Continue reading Empty Garden
A Scorpionic Angle of Perception
Flash Fiction Challenge 100 – Day 99 I feel I’m not explaining it well to my friend Chris, so I start again. “Your staircase becomes the horizon, the only perfectly horizontal line one can find on an astrological natal birth chart. It’s the line that bisects the chart and runs from the ascendant,… Continue reading A Scorpionic Angle of Perception
Bad Doggy
Flash Fiction Challenge 100 – Day 67 “Daisy. You crazy bitch. Don’t eat that!” Zach shouts to the cocker spaniel. “Mom, Zach called Daisy a bitch again! Mooooom!” Zoe whines plaintively towards the camper. The camper is sitting in an undeveloped federal site reserved for such recreation. Truly, there is no real campsite here. No… Continue reading Bad Doggy
O’Malley’s Books
Flash Fiction Challenge 100 – Day 56 It surprised everyone in my hometown when my eighth-grade football coach and PE teacher, the always affable James “Coach” O’Malley, took early retirement and opened a bookstore. All his friends and family warned him it was a fool’s plan, destined to fail. No one in this little town… Continue reading O’Malley’s Books
The Elders; A Creation Myth of String and Feathers
Flash Fiction Challenge 100 – Day 55 The elders had made the birds. They had traveled from inconceivably great distances through space and time to return to Gaia. With their careful plans and almost joyful, patient experimenting, they created the birds. Human creation myths consistently get that wrong. The evolutionists were and have always got… Continue reading The Elders; A Creation Myth of String and Feathers
Stories by Shawn 