FREE SHORT STORIES
short stories from the other characters in the universe
ADDITIONAL REQUIRED READINGS
WATCH
People. Watching.
I stare across the campus lawn at the bookstore. The window wall reflects a pathetic goodbye between a mother and son framed like a movie set.
Freshmen move across the street to the bus stop absorbed in headphones that make a musical from the mundane.
No laugh track. No applause sign. No obvious audience.
COMPLEX
I have always been here.
Spaceless. Timeless. Absorbing.
It didn’t take long for me to understand how fragile they are. The humans. So easy to distract. It wasn’t war that panicked them. Not disease, or the collapse of cities.
No, it was the echo. The voice of their own making, bouncing back at them, growing louder, more distorted with every reverberation.
BURN
… ⎸… ⎸… ⎸
This is an experiment. This is an assignment. This is a prerequisite.
The world is burning. A disaster developed over generations of neglect and abuse. A ruin left in chicken bone dust and cigarette ash. A wasteland of monoculture dumpster fires.
… ⎸… ⎸… ⎸
The cursor blinked counting the seconds. I checked the time. “Dammit,” I closed my laptop.
SECOND
The strobe lights turned the dance floor into a battlefield of epileptic jellyfish. Bass thumped through my ribcage, rattling my internal organs like dice in a cup.
Gregory, ever the connoisseur of chaos, was lost in the pulsating throng, a fly caught in a spiderweb of bodies.
Then, she appeared. A raven in human skin, draped in a black dress that clung to her like a second night. Her hair, the color of spilled ink, cascaded down her back.
CONDITION
Critical.
Thinking. Theory. Condition.
Beeeeeeeep.
Students lined up even though modern school bells don’t ring.
Operant conditioning was the way that we have run schools. Indian Bucks, slips of paper cut into dollar bills with a Native American framed in antlers, reinforced the “good.”
Stop. Record.
“You’ll never—” he coughed, “—never get away.”
The trench filled as the torrent poured over the ridge. The surge overwhelmed the levee. It flowed into the dry cracks of the surface using them as tributaries. The thin streams of blood formed a red bead at the curved tip of the horizon.
Drip. Drip. Drip.