01 Mar The Watchmaster
Charles Walker Woods was a gentleman of means. In a city rapidly being subsumed by the dim fog of industry, he felt it was not just his right to stand out as a breath of fresh airβit was his duty. Were it not for people...
Charles Walker Woods was a gentleman of means. In a city rapidly being subsumed by the dim fog of industry, he felt it was not just his right to stand out as a breath of fresh airβit was his duty. Were it not for people...
The poster was simple. Someone had done their best with it, but their best wasnβt very good. MONSTIR HUNTIRS WANTED, read the boldly misspelled words at the top. Below that was a drawing straight out of a childβs imagination. It showed a hunched creature with big,...
As a kid, I read a ton of sci-fi.Β Pulp stuff, real trash, most of it, but it inspired me.Β It told me that there were things out there to be discovered, that there were new worlds to open up.Β No matter how far weβd...
Todayβs my birthday.Β Thatβs not generally something I bring up.Β I donβt celebrate it.Β Almost no one knows when it is, and I like it that way. I donβt like being put on the spot.Β I donβt like the falseness of people wishing me a happy...
I was supposed to be at my friendβs wedding this weekend.Β And the thing is, maybe I was there?Β Only Iβm pretty sure it was canceled.Β I went to the brideβs funeral.Β Butβlet me back up. I knew both Aldin and Petra from college.Β They met...
I thought it was just like any other construction zone.Β It looked the same: same cones, same signs, same trucks.Β And honestly, if people would learn how to drive, I probably never would have noticed any differently.Β But people get stupid in the face of...
It had been a whirlwind romance.Β Hakamiah Morrison had been head over heels for Delilah from the moment he first laid eyes on her.Β He was not greatly skilled in the art of seduction, or indeed even conversation, so it took a few tries to...
Obadiah had forty different words for fog.Β From his fishing shack on the waterfront, he watched various fogs come and go, ebbing and flowing around the town.Β He needed every one of the words to describe the varied types that ran their blurry touch over...
There were three things everyone could tell you about David.Β The first, the one everyone noticed immediately, was that he was handsome.Β Like, Hollywood handsome.Β He had a roguish charm, too, a disarming smile that lit up his face and made everything all right.Β Men,...
I'm from a smallish town.Β In a town like that, you know everyone's business, for better or for worse.Β You all go to the same school, shop at the same stores, show up on Sundays at the same churches. More or less, anyway.Β My town had...
Itβs nearly Hanukkah again, the Jewish winter holiday also called the Festival of Lights. To most people, that refers to the oil that miraculously lasted much longer than it should have, keeping the eternal flame burning until more oil could be made. For me, though,...
βAre we there yet?β Nicole asked sleepily, her eyes still closed. The car bumped along the unlit two-lane country road, its motion answering her question before Corso could reply. βWelcome back to the land of the living,β he teased gently. βThought I might have to carry...
If I couldβve said one thing to covid-19, had one opportunity to deliver a message that the virus could understand, it wouldβve been: please donβt destroy my life. No posturing, no tough-guy stuff from me. Just a plea. Not that I think it would have...
Danielβs life was going nowhere. Not dramatically nowhere; he wasnβt failing, crashing or burning. Even a negative direction would have at least been going somewhere. He was just plodding along on a perfectly flat trajectory. No gains. No losses. No change. His siblings, meanwhile, were soaring....
I canβt touch people who are almost dead. Itβs not a phobia, a religious thing or even a preference. I just literally canβt do it. My hands pass through them like theyβre already gone. Itβs horribly unnerving. You ever walk up a flight of stairs, but...
I recently bought a house in the country.Β I wouldnβt quite call it a country estate, but if someone else did, I wouldnβt disagree with them, either.Β The house covers a few thousand square feet, and itβs on 25 acres of land.Β Honestly, itβs a...
Until recently, I was the head of the psychology department at a small, unassuming university.Β To protect the privacy of those still working there, I will not tell you which university it is, though I suspect you can find it in the papers.Β It depends...
βTell me about the first time you remember being scared.β Duane hesitated.Β βItβs stupid, you know?β βNothingβs stupid, Duane,β Dr. Earles gently admonished.Β Earles was a balding man in his early sixties, with thin glasses and a neatly-trimmed, mostly white beard.Β He very much looked the part...
βAnd I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.β β Book of Revelation 6:8 βAlert: traffic ahead.Β Estimated travel time has increased by 15 minutes.β Simon sighed and drummed his fingers on his steering wheel....
911 gets three kinds of calls.Β Thereβs the βsomeone needs helpβ call, obviously.Β Thatβs the sort that most of our training deals with, and itβs the kind that everyone pictures first when they think of 911.Β You could, if you wanted, subdivide these calls into...