[Fiction] Home Sweet Home

My head throbbed. I sighed and rubbed my temples. It was Friday afternoon at the office, and Allie was boasting again about her cream-colored villa in Tuscany.

“I just expanded the polo grounds!” Allie giggled, coquettishly covering her mouth.

I popped an aspirin into my mouth as the new office girls oohed and fawned over her. Among the gray uniforms, Allie stood out at the water cooler. Her fingernails were manicured blood orange today, and they fluttered in circles around the new medal pinned to her breast pocket. Derision burned in my stomach as they skated around the inverted crescent, but I bit my lower lip and went back to my typing. I cracked my knuckles, exhaling in relief as I flexed my out-flung elbows; they no longer touched the walls.

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[Fiction] Tahra of Cursed Time

A teenage girl flung herself headlong through the maze of the fishing district. She scrambled over barrels of squid and mackerel. Her heart leapt with her feet and her ears strained to catch the sound of armored footsteps behind her. She jerked, skidding, as advancing Royal Guards bullied and pushed protesting merchants out of their path. Ducking into an alleyway, she crouched behind a pile of discarded crates and peeled off the sash tied to her waist. Its fluttering skirt dropped, revealing twin throwing knives sheathed in her leather belt.

A guard’s voice, threatening and masculine, echoed through the alleyway.

“Did she come in here?”

[Fiction] Fooled

Davis looked up from his crossword puzzle to the flickering security screen. One of the manufacturing droids on the assembly line had fallen to the floor again. The collapses had been happening with an increasing frequency that had become routine and unlike the first time, Davis didn’t feel the fluttering panic of the unknown but a dull irritation that it had cut into his lull time.

He pressed the comm for the Repair Department.

“Hey Jarold, we’ve got another one down.”