Contributor: Phillip Donnelly

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In the dream, he was a she.
He had the frame of a young girl, thin and fragile, but the body had no face. He, or rather she, or it, or whatever, was walking along a rocky beach in late Autumn. The sun set, turning the sky a dark red, like the embers of a forgotten fire.
She knew she was looking for something but did not know what. There was a dreamy emptiness to her quest, but also the will to continue.
She could make something out near the water's edge and cautiously approached the bobbing figure, wondering what it could be.
The sound of the waves washing against the shores grew. It became magnified and distorted and each wave began to cry. Each wave was soured with the bitter spite of all little girls, each wave's curl was twisted by the crashing malice of a child’s hate.
The sun, which had been setting, rose again and began to burn with a new midday intensity, its rays now beating in time with the waves' girlish laughter.
The grey sand turned black and oily, swallowing the dreamer’s feet. The boy who dreamed he was a girl wanted to run away, but couldn’t get her feet out of the slimy black quicksand. The more she struggled, the deeper she fell.
She stopped moving and felt her sense of will start to ebb and flow into the will of the tide.
The figure she had seen in the water was being swept towards her. As it got nearer, she could begin to distinguish some of its features. It was a little over a foot in length, and almost rectangular in shape. Whatever it was, it was floating. It grew closer, inch by inch, and the rest of the world began to fall out of focus and dissolve.
She could see the strands of long brown hair floating on the water, like a thousand tiny sea worms, all moving independently of one another. She could also make out a navy school uniform of some kind, but it was tattered and the sun and salty water had left it partly bleached.
One shoe remained, but the other had been removed by the tide, revealing a tattered sock, with a bloated yellow foot and blackened nails underneath.
Entirely against her will, she turned the floating corpse over.
What had once been a young girl's face stared at her through eyeless sockets. Maggots squirmed in the bloody holes and the child's skin had been stretched and so totally disfigured as to be unrecognisable. It had become a ghoulish mixture of blue and purple, but with the faintest hue of yellow underneath. Septic fluid seeped from her ears, and a large grub poked out of the hole where her nose used to be.
Despite the visage, the dreamer’s attention became fixated on one of the child's ‘hands’, part dog’s paw, part eagle's claw. On one side, white fur was soaked and matted, but on the other, it had yellow scales, some of which had fallen off, revealing bloody flesh. Twisted talons jutted out of the rotten flesh and gripped something fiercely.
She tried to unfasten the dead girl's grip, but she didn't have the strength. It was as though the girl had died through the effort of holding onto whatever was inside her claw, and not even death could make her release her grip.
The dreamer wanted to leave but couldn't. She did not remember where her home was, or who she was, or if indeed she was a she or a he. The answer to these questions was wrapped up in what the dead girl was holding.
“We know not what we are, nor what we do,” a ghostly voice whispered, and then a thousand wavelets giggled ringlets of contempt.
The sun suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a full moon. A billion stars came into being and waited. The girl’s hand opened, revealing the skull of a foetus.
Without warning, the dead girl jerked her head towards the dreamer in a strange mechanical way. The dreamer flinched at the sound of the bones clicking into and out of place as she made raven-like spasmodic movements with her head.
What was left of the girl's mouth slid into a sickening smile, a slimy grimace. Her open cavernous mouth contained no teeth and no tongue--only a hole that seemed to lead to infinity, and to the hell that lies beyond it.
A mournful but raspy voice emerged from the gaping hole. It was an adult female voice, a voice that had once been human, but would never be so again: a voice moving from sadness to despair.
When it spoke it felt as though all other noises on the beach had vanished.
"I am mother, child, future and past
I am the waves, the tide and the sea
I am all and you are nothing
And now not even time is yours”

*****

With a sharp intake of breath, the dreamer awoke...
And then he died.


- - -
Phillip Donnelly grew up in Dublin but has spent most of his life teaching English as a foreign language in various countries and continents. He currently lives in Hong Kong. He has had several short stories published in ezines, including one at Weirdyear, Proppland, and has also written three novels and several travel books. He is currently trying to interest publishers in his latest noel, Kev the Vampire.

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Author: Phillip Donnelly

Contributor: David Macpherson

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Two days after my grandmother died, we were in Neptune, New Jersey, where she was spoken about by people standing behind a podium. My father's best friend growing up was there with the wife he was soon to divorce. He spoke of the importance of family, God's ever loving gaze. Things like that.

Afterwards, we grandchildren were deposited on the Ocean Grove boardwalk, while the parents went to handle the paper work that survived the old lady. We talked for a while about college and work and things we did. The wind did not allow such autobiography and we walked down a frigid December gang plank in silence, heading to the Playland we went to when we visited as kids. It was shuttered closed. Not for the season, but for the ages.

We spoke about the funhouse we loved. The tilting room, the hall of mirrors. The pre-recorded shrieks of horror that startled me every time. On the plywood that covered the Playland entrance was spray painted the words Die Big, in large block letters. Fearing omens, we turned round.

On the boardwalk, the Devil his own self stood on a soap box selling whatever was desired, wanted. Anything at all, cheap, only the price of a soul. They didn't even have to be our souls. They could be lingering in our pockets, stuck on our shoes, sent to us in the mail by mistake.

It was too cold to be tempted and we walked on, finding our parents. My Aunt was in tears. She wanted her mother's engagement ring. The nursing home said it was missing. It had not been stolen, goodness no, just missing. These things happen.

They said my grandmother probably was the one to lose it what with the state she was in at the end. My aunt didn't care, she said, “It's not even that nice a ring, I just want it back.” With nothing to give her, we bid our goodbyes.

For the next week, I found myself inspired to do stupid, drunken acts with no knowledge of why I might do such things.


- - -
David lives in Central Massachusetts with his wife Heather and son George.

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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: Stephen V. Ramey

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A boy stood in dappled sunlight, blocking my way. He was bone thin, all arms and legs. His expression reminded me of a clown's face. Not the garish white makeup and oversized nose, but the way his lips curled into a goofy smile even as his gaze violated me.
"What do you want?" I said. I had some change in my purse, but he should at least have to ask before I offered it up.
He laughed a child's laugh, unpracticed, full of noise. He raised one hand. In his fist was clutched a hand grenade, oblong and dimpled, grayish green in color.
"Where is your mother?" I said.
"Here," he said.
"Where?"
"Dead," he admitted.
"Your father, then." What a crass woman I must seem, not to offer sympathy for a dead mother.
"Hell," the boy said. He lowered the first hand and raised the other. It, too, held a grenade. The pin dangled like an earring.
"Is that a toy?" I said. "Who's watching you?"
That laugh again. Burst after burst of caustic sound. It set my nerves on edge, stirred something dark in my gut. Nauseated, I clutched my stomach and crouched down. Beyond the boy, a couple held hands on a park bench. Were they his parents? They seemed too young.
"So?" he said. He stood over me now, a scarecrow silhouette. I swallowed the sourness from my mouth.
"So?" I managed. I felt an impulse to cradle him, to feel that mouth pulling at my nipple. I leaned onto my knees.
A grenade fell past my face.
The explosion threw me back, light and sound and emotion all at once. Hair pulled from my scalp, skin from bone. I felt the structure of my skeleton cave in.
Pain radiated from my uterus, shot to my ankles and elbows, my tender breasts. Another contraction. Contraction, convulsion, burst after burst.
The bastard who raped me flashed bright, that pocked face, the pug nose and squinting eyes. Drunk, disoriented, I felt him thrust into me, once, twice, again, again. Where was the pleasure it was supposed to bring? Where was the connection I craved?
Another digging cramp. Sobs stretched my throat. A dented oval gushed out of me, red tissue, a spreading clot. Was that a face?
The boy was gone. Shifting patterns of light lapped at my shadow. A wave broke over my upturned face, coated my tongue with honey. I breathed in and out.
The dark thing inside me was gone.
Smoothing my dress, I stood. As I walked past the couple, I felt my halo emerge.


- - -
Stephen V. Ramey lives in beautiful New Castle, Pennsylvania where it is always sunny and warm and kittens do not suffer. His work has appeared in various places, and he edits the annual Triangulation anthology from Parsec Ink.

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Author: Stephen V. Ramey

Contributor: David Macpherson

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Rob was this roommate I had in college who had slept hard. He'd be asleep and not wake up even when the phone was ringing, but he would get up, answer it, and have a conversation, all while still being asleep. You would be on the phone with him talking and suddenly you would realize that something wasn't quite right, the way the conversation was going was off and you would ask, "Rob are you asleep right now?" And he would say, "Yes." So you would say, "Now Rob, listen to me. Hang up the phone and go to bed." And that’s what he did. He had no memory of any of this. Not even a dream memory.

We would have him write down phone messages when he was like this. He would wake up and see a note in his own hand that said, "I was asleep when Pete called. I will call him in the afternoon." That was a nice message. We didn't do nice messages often. Sometimes he would read messages that he wrote down that said, "I'm a bad bad boy. Have to return my professor's diaper." Or "I live in the Pink Pretty Panty Pantry." Junk like that. It wasn't clever, but we thought it was. Rob would smile along, though who would really like this kind of shit being done at his expense? Really.

I didn't see him for a while, I had graduated, and we were roommates, we were never best buds. But I was visiting an ex-girlfriend in his dorm, seeing if we wanted to do something about our relationship status or just be something undisclosed when I saw him. I didn't recognize. My ex had to tell me it was Rob. "Come on, that ain't him." She just shook her head and went back into her room closing the door behind me, which kind of let me know where I stood with her.

“Rob,” I said, “How you been?” I didn’t need for him to tell me. He was thin and puffy, all at the same time. His skin looked pale, like it had trapped in the wash for fifty cycles. He hadn’t been showering often enough, that was easy to determine.

He took some time to recognize me. Then he smiled yellow teeth. “Man, you are just the kind of guy I was hoping to see. I mean, you know people. I need to know people who know people.” It was like a bad musical number but I just nodded my head.

He dragged me into his room. He didn’t have a roommate. No one wanted to be his roommate, so the second bed was vacant waiting for a brave soul to fill it. “Remember those phone messages you guys used to have me write when I was asleep? Remember that? Well I still have the notebook and still I wake up and there be more of them. But about a month ago, they changed.” He pushed aside hamburger wrappers and showed me the note book he wrote the messages in. I looked at it.

They were how I recalled them. Funny things: “Must buy new footie pajamas,” or “I’m a little tea pot short and stout.” Then in his hand was a longer message, “The time has come. There will be knives on throats. There will be stains on poor campus carpets that no one will be able to remove. They will have to cut the carpets out. The blood will come. The bodies will be deposited. You need to understand Rob. This is inevitable. This shall occur. I needed a scribe, someone to record my good works. I chose you Rob.”

“Wow,” I said. “That ain’t funny.”

Rob grabbed the notebook back. “There’s others. They get more detailed. They list dates things will happen. The dates are still in the future, but not by much now.”

“Dude, go to the police.”

“How can I do that. It might be me writing this, thinking this. I might not just be dictating it. I don’t know. I figure all I need to do is not go to sleep. That’s all I can do.”

“Rob, what can I do for? Really. You won’t do the right thing and go to the cops.”

He smiled that ugly smile. “I know you have connections. Mini-thins and coffee are not cutting it anymore. I need something stronger to keep me awake. You know people.”

“Rob, that’s not a solution.”

He just stared at me. Ugly tired eyes did not plead at me, they just observed me, clinically, dispassionately. I told him sure, I would call some people. I would get him all he needed and then I left campus.

I didn’t call anyone. I don’t know anyone. I can’t figure why he thought I did. Every day I check the campus news site to see if anything happened. Nothing yet. And that’s good I guess.


- - -
David is a writer living in Central Massachusetts with his wife Heather and son George.

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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: Nathaniel Tower

- -
A puddle of goopy pink blob greeted Marty Cooper when he woke up one Sunday morning. He'd been dreaming about his wife being angry at him for some reason or another.
When his alarm blasted him out of his nightmare, he tried to spring his head off the pillow and silence the buzzing, but the thick sticky substance clung to his head and pillow like gum to a shoe and asphalt on a hot day. The further he pulled his head away from the pillow the further the pink gelatin stretched.
Despite the force pulling Marty's head back to the stained pillow, his head felt significantly lighter. Staring at the goop, it didn't take long for Marty to figure out what was happening. His brain was leaking out of his ear.
While trying to gather the strength to lift his leaking body from the bed, Marty tried to remember what he had done the night before and where his wife was right now. There was the off chance she had gone to church, but he didn't think she would have gone without at least waking him. Unless of course she really was mad at him. Perhaps that hadn't been a dream after all.
Through his gooey thoughts, Marty thought he heard his wife's nagging voice call for him to get out of bed so she could change the sheets. Marty sprang out of his bed like a lopsided jack-in-the-box. His unbalanced body bumped into the nightstand, knocking over the hand-blown glass lamp his grandmother had given him for no reason other than she was dying. The lamp fell to the carpet out of Marty's desperate reaching hand. He shook his head to try to regain his center of balance, a string of thick pink goo squirting like jelly out of a water pistol onto his dresser and carpet.
"Muhbran," Marty shouted, the words coming out mostly wrong. He clasped his hands to his head in a scene reminiscent of The Scream, which Marty had never actually seen. The goop seeped onto his left hand and oozed its way between his fingers and down his arm, but nothing came out of the right ear.
Marty raced to the bathroom, his body dragging as if he were some sort of wounded animal searching for protection from an onslaught of hunters. He rifled through his toiletries until he came across a loose cotton ball. Showing no concern for the grime that had collected in the soft fabric, Marty plunged it into his left ear. After tilting his head to the right a little to let his brain settle, he stood and looked in the mirror.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary with his general appearance, save for the cotton ball sticking out of his ear. Only a few seconds into the study of his visage, Marty saw the cotton ball expanding as it filled with the pink sludge that he had formerly used to think. Without thinking, he sprinted from the bathroom into the kitchen and threw his body down by his wine rack. He pulled out the bottles one by one, but they were all unopened. Without much consideration, he chose the finest bottle from his collection, a 1998 vintage, and set it down on the linoleum tile while he searched his drawers for a corkscrew, but all he could find were some knives and toothpicks.
By now the cotton ball was a breaking dam, and Marty's liquefied brain was seeping down his neck and unto his favorite shirt. He mumbled and moaned as he grabbed the wine bottle and headed down the hall and out his front door. Bottle in hand, he stumbled like a drunken zombie across his lawn and then his neighbor's, almost tripping over the Sunday paper. Two cars driving slowly through the neighborhood almost collided as their drivers gasped at the sight.
Marty charged up the lone step onto the neighbor's porch and began pounding on the door. After three knocks he slapped at the doorbell. Unsure if he'd actually hit it, he slapped twice more. A moment later, with little sense of urgency, a man in a blue robe opened the door.
"What's going on, Marty? What brings you over to the ol' abode so early in the morning?" the robed man asked as he sipped from a steaming coffee cup.
"Corscrew," Marty shouted as he held up the wine bottle while pressing his other hand against the swollen cotton ball.
"I don't think you need to drink this early in the morning," the neighbor replied with a few hearty laughs.
"CORSCREW!" Marty screamed at the man, the force of his efforts causing a thick sludge of brain to ooze between his fingers and onto his neighbor's immaculate porch.
"What the hell?" With a horrified look, the neighbor slammed the door. Marty heard the man's hoarse screams echo around the foyer. He smashed the bottle of wine against the sidelight window, the shards of glass piercing the delicate flesh of his uncalloused hand. With blood seeping from his hand and brains gushing from his head, Marty staggered back to his house with the half-broken bottle dangling from his fingertips to do the next most logical thing: call 9-1-1.
Hunched over in a near bear crawl, Marty reentered his house and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He grabbed his phone from the nightstand and flipped it on. His fingers jabbed at the buttons until he finally dialed the right combination.
"9-1-1, what's your emergency?" he heard an operator say as he brought the phone to his good ear.
Before he could utter a response, he saw the handgun resting on the floor. He inhaled deeply the scent of fresh gunpowder. The phone slipped from his hand as he felt the small hole on the right side of his head. His body collapsed to the carpet and his wife smiled in the mirror.


- - -
Nathaniel Tower writes fiction, teaches English, and manages the online lit magazine Bartleby Snopes. His short fiction has appeared in over 100 online and print magazines. His story "The Oaten Hands" was named one of 190 notable stories by storySouth's Million Writers Award in 2009. His first novel, A Reason To Kill, is was released in July 2011 through MuseItUp Publishing. Visit him at www.bartlebysnopes.com/ntower.htm

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Author: Nathaniel Tower

Contributor: Chad Stroup

- -
Do not attend class; it is a construct.
Cross the revolving threshold with a malleable mind.
What you absorb may or may not affect you profoundly.
You may think the man next to you is corporeal.
Caress his well-worn sweater.
It is the dressing of a corpse.
You may know in your mind's eye that the woman across the room is breathing.
Crumple a piece of paper and softly toss it at her.
It will bounce off her face as if she were made of wax.
You may believe that your professor is planting seeds in your mind.
He or she is digging shallow graves.
Determine for yourself what will be engraved in your headstone.


- - -
I am an MFA Creative Writing Student with a focus in fiction at San Diego State University. I enjoy twisting the possibilities of the darker side of fiction. I also run a blog at http://subvertbia.blogspot.com/

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Author: Chad Stroup

Contributor: Ward Webb

- -
The gash in my forehead stung like a bitch. If it wasn’t so dark I’d be able to check my fingers to see how bloody it is; but it’s too dark in here. Dark and stale and hard to breathe. I don’t feel a lot of wetness on my fingers – so the cut shouldn’t be that bad.

The tire iron is wedged under my ribs – pressing into my side with each bump we hit. He was on paved asphalt for the longest time, but somewhere in the last five minutes he must have turned off. Now it feels like we’re on some kind of unpaved dirt road - one with an obnoxious amount of potholes. His speed is reckless. I can tell from the roaring thunder surrounding me. If only it wasn’t so dark...

I never saw him approach me. June and I had just checked out and were heading back to the car when she told me she’d forgotten to pick up her pads (the whole reason we’d even gone to the convenience store in the first place – I was always forgetting things, so was she – that’s why we were meant for each other). I climbed behind the steering wheel and gulped away at my Slushee. The tiny rocks of ice peppered my teeth and almost hurt with the chilled bite. I watched through the window as June thoughtfully selected the proper size, and made her way to the bored looking cashier. He never even looked up at her while he rang her up. I just sat in the car and watched and worked on my Shushee, as happy as an eight year old.

I never heard the breathing. I never even thought to turn around and check the backseat like they warn old ladies to do. I guess I should have, but it’s a little late now. If I ever escape from this guy, I’ll check my backseats from now on. I swear.

A particularly large dip in the road sent the iron tools below me clanking together. I gasped; the jolt had rocked the air from my lungs and sent it exploding out into the darkness like a sour burp. He couldn’t hear me. He couldn’t hear anything over that music. How someone can listen to German marching songs at full blast while driving down the interstate is beyond me. All of the tracks sounded the same to me. Heavy, driving drums and cheers in a foreign language where every word sounded hostile. I closed my eyes and tried not to panic as the car purred around me.

The thin, coarse carpeting mashed into my face and left an itchy imprint. The smell of oil and antifreeze was suffocating, but I kept quiet and thought about my next move.

There was nothing I could do lying here in the dark listening to the gravel of the road crunch a foot beneath where my head was positioned. I had to move fast when the trunk opened – I knew that much. He had not had the foresight to tie me up, which was my one and only hope. Knocking me unconscious hadn’t done anything to render his plan effective. I was crafty and as soon as that lid popped up, I’d be ready. Somehow.

I picked and pulled at the tiny, curling lip of carpet. I struggled to get it loose. Held in place and glued down by years of accumulated spills and pinned against the ground by the weight of my body – I tore and pulled as hard as I could and finally a tiny strip came loose. Being blind made things much harder.

Finally I felt the car bank to the right and then swoop off to the left. The sound of gravel disappeared. There was suddenly no sound at all – but I still felt the car moving, so we must be on grass. I struggled to find something to use as a weapon as we slowed down. The marching tunes died. The only sound was my breath.

The engine cut off like a roaring lion being shot in the face. Instantly the silence was overwhelming as I lay there listening to the muffled sound of footsteps coming my way.

The jingling of keys came through the heavy steel lid, one grinded its way into the lock and a tiny sliver of night peeked through. I’d had no time to pry the tire iron from under my ribs. I thought I had more time. I had to get up. I had to spring now, as soon as the lock released.

With my free legs I kicked against the bottom lid of the trunk as hard as I could and the sheet of metal flew up. Instantly I saw what lay in store for me. Framed by the edges of the car’s trunk, four men waited quietly behind the man that had appeared in my back seat. Standing there grinning and looking ominous; I’d seen enough of their faces in that fleeting glimpse to know I was in trouble.

My kidnapper stood there looking down on me like I was a particularly nice stuffed animal he had won at the fair.

“Told you I’d find us a nice ‘un,” he said over his shoulders to the others. “Now hand me the rope. We gone show this here boy how we do things down South.”

A triumphant murmur escaped the onlookers as the one furthest from the car tossed an old, dried bundle of rope to the man from the backseat. It landed at his feet with a thud but he never took his eyes off of me. Squinting and mouthing words I couldn’t hear, he sneered and his broken teeth glistened in the moonlight.

Suddenly I realized this wasn’t a game. It wasn’t some hate-crime-prank carried out by the local frat boys – this was serious. I saw the men behind him clearer again. My bloodshot eyes searched around looking for any chance I could cling to for hope – but there was none. Parked alone miles off the road in an abandoned, fallow field I was all alone. I was outnumbered. I was blocked from leaping from the trunk. If I tried to run, they could just overtake me in the car. There was no hope.

He ushered me out of the trunk by my throat with another ignorant slam about my religion spewing from his whiskey-cracked lips. As I stepped over the rim of the car’s boot – I looked off across the field. Plowed lines lay parallel, tilled and churned and ready to take the seed of another year, they covered the ground like corduroy in every direction.

I turned and faced my five attackers. I didn’t see men, I saw only the weapons they carried. As I pulled my right leg out of the trunk and stood up – the only thing I saw coming was the rope, a crowbar, a baseball bat, a short-stubby carving knife and a dirty old pistol.

The land shimmered in front of me and my feet suddenly felt like lead. I panted. Air choked off in my throat and tiny blue fish swam around everywhere, toying with my vision. I fainted and landed face down in the cool earth.

The last sound I heard were the footsteps approaching; and that heavy, lustful breathing from the five men.


- - -
Some of my other work has appeared in Deep South Magazine as well as Dew On The Kudzu.

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Author: Ward Webb

Contributor: Chris Leek

- -
People didn’t come from Las Vegas, not in the same way as people came from Baltimore or Jonesboro County, Idaho. Joe had decided Las Vegas was a place to go to, not come from.
He sat swilling coffee from a fresh white china mug and idly surveyed the casino's gaming floor. The slots restless and chattering even at this late – or was it early – hour. He watched a plump woman at the nearest machine relentlessly feeding in quarters. Her ample backside attempting to swallow the stool on which she perched. Time and again she yanked on the lever and stared intently as the reels spun, clunking to a halt one by one. At last a bell rang, a light flashed and the machine spat out a tray full of change. She didn’t break stride, just fished again in her blue plastic cup and continued to worship at the temple of the slot.
Beyond her, a lone black jack player rapped on the table and cried “Hit me again Dougie!” The weary dealer flipped him a card along with a look that said he hated the guy just for being born.
A waitress breezed past Joe, handing him a flyer that showed the variety and delights of breakfast cocktails. Two weeks ago it had never occurred to him that such a thing as a breakfast cocktail could exist let alone entertain the thought that he might order such a thing. He felt his stomach would probably handle one but he wasn’t sure that his conscience could. He was a new fish; road dust fresh on his shoes. A Bloody Mary or a Palmango Mimosa at 6.30am was still in his future, he didn’t doubt for a moment that he would get to it, just not quite yet.
He spun lazily round to face the bar and wordlessly indicated his need of a refill. The bar tender broke off from studying form at the track and slid over, seamless in his retrieval of the coffee pot on route. Joe nodded his thanks and sipped gratefully at the black-brown sludge, marveling again at its restorative powers.
From what he had seen everyone in Vegas was a gambler of sorts; they all played the game. The hooker out on the strip rolling a dice on every trick, hoping for a clean one, an easy one, one that wouldn’t knock her around. The not-so-high roller at the tables nursing his desperate, diminishing pile of chips (hit me again Dougie!) And Joe himself, still not sure what game would be his or how big to bet, but like cocktails for breakfast he would get to it soon enough.


- - -

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Author: Chris Leek

Contributor: George S. Karagiannis

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Of vital significance for your narrative is and will always be the way you visualize the futuristic and utopian or dystopian world where real action is taking place, along with its very details. Just to toy with the idea you are on the safe side, you may describe ‘your world’ as a philip dickish setting with post-apocalyptic, totalitarian surroundings or with humanity drawn to its endmost humiliation suppressing any specified freedom all along. The philip dickish environments render flexible access to shifted realities, sociopolitical hysterias, religious inconsistencies and paradoxical behaviors by authority-doubted human entities, thus yielding a user-friendly framework to build up the most non-comprehensive, deteriorated, knotty or psychopathic character you’ve ever imagined.

Of course, there could be numerous alternatives in the world you might envision for your story. For instance, you may purely formulate it as peter hamiltonish if you tend to describe events with their consequences in large scale impact; however in this case, avoid generating dramatis personae of more than two-hundred characters, should you wish your audience being able to follow you through your warily-crafted, space opera pages. In yet other cases, you might seek for a brian aldissish surrogate world, whereby you describe strange prospective fates for humanity, with human leftovers typically struggling for survival in a hostile plant- or insect-dominated planet; however in this case, avoid establishing cliché tribal organizations living in caves –or obsolete nuclear stations they are unaware of– and deploying cliché myths and prophecies that one divinely chosen man –usually naming him or her as ‘the light-bringer’, ‘the plague-hunter’, ‘the child of the dawn’ or something relevant– will bring an end to this wretchedness. Also, unless you keep in possession a far better idea than internet obtaining some level of self-consciousness, artificial intelligence coming into conflict with human neuroethics, and virtual realities intermixing with the present so-called human realities in a Matrix fashion, do not attempt to give your story a william gibsonish or tony ballantyneish tone. Finally, unless your mind shovels up a fascinating medical thriller, or at least a thought-provoking and dogma-challenging biological premise –almost to the level of integrating Darwin’s evolutionary theories with genetic bioengineering– it wouldn’t be advised to adopt a robin cookish, greg bearish or nancy kressish technique.

Improper character development that would not serve the purpose of your story would be an added constraint for a successful outcome; therefore, implementing the finest characters in your given world should not be circumstantial at all, but thoroughly designed. To avoid stereotypic ‘implants’ in your story, you may have to create characters that will question the unquestionable on a –preferably– paragon bureaucratic State, haunted from the ghosts of a previous or potential socioeconomic rupture or perhaps female characters seeking for their sexual orientation in a philosophical perspective; in such case you should concentrate on an ursula le guinish pattern. Upon wishing to involve characters that will deal with a crisis or dilemma in your story, guided by scientific rationales, research-based hypotheses and address the questions as reasoning-oriented puzzles –who are most probably also involved in academia– then an isaac asimovish character profiling is the most suitable fit. But, unless you have to offer a fresh challenge for the three laws of robotics, do not even bother to consider a robot character encompassed by bioethical issues. If your character personalities are tailored as interstellar spies, mercenaries, detectives or even lovers, then a lois mcmaster bujoldish style could efficiently do the job for you. If you are inclined to develop charismatic leaders followed by slavish human cohorts, then a frank herbertish milieu could easily be applied to your character panel; however, in this case, try to avoid positioning these leaders in deserted dune-resembling planets with lack of water, because you will end up repeating the story all over again. Finally, are you in need of a superhero for your story? Just bring into play the orson scott cardish spirit, as long as it is at least an adult one this time!

If the perspective of your story will be first-person, then it should always follow a gene wolfeish method of development, for it will be safeguarding reader’s suspense throughout. For the rest narrative modes or in cases of attempted literary experimentation, you should always keep to the robert heinleinish and theodore sturgeonish paradigms as they have fairly defined the existing standards for the science fiction school.

Salt and pepper is an essential evil for a good science fiction story! So, never ever forget to also introduce diminutive amounts of douglas adamish elements, since spicy or satiric humor is always highly-appreciated in a broad sci-fi readership. It is not highly-recommended, but upon your own volition of spreading an aura of bizarro in your story, you may attempt to provide a carlton melick IIIish texture in it; however, you should steer clear of the Satan’s successful attempts of conquering Earth, Jesus figures participating in porn movies, excessive descriptions of sexual orgies ending up in abdominal penetrations with splatter-like consequences, and attacks of highly-intelligent zombies flying with helicopters and jumping out of them with parachutes in case of an imminent crash.

Last but not least, you should always bear in mind to bring into context a personal signature in your work –in my case to allow for a george karagiannisish color to be penciled all over my novel– or else your story will be accused of being in fact non-authentic or even worse a stolen concept. And as an amateur author, you wouldn’t want that happening, now, would you?


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George S. Karagiannis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece at 1984. He finished the School of Veterinary Medicine and is currently a PhD student at the University of Toronto in Canada, studying the molecular mechanisms of cancer metastasis. He enjoys writing science fiction, mainly in the sub-genres of (1) hard science fiction, (2) bizarro and horror sci-fi and (3) apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic, but more often blending all those, together! His favorite science fiction author is Philip K. Dick, whom he has been reading since he was introduced in the field. He is also an abstractionist/surreal artist and his blog can be found here: http://abstractsur.blogspot.com/

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Author: George S. Karagiannis

Contributor: Jerry Guarino

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    “I’ll take a Venti hot chocolate, raspberry scone and one of those new holiday cups,” said the man as he flirted with the beautiful girl behind the counter.  The Latina barista took his money, winked and prepared his order.  Meanwhile, the line was back out to the doorway, not uncommon at this time of the morning.  

California coffee houses were a little different than those back east.  Sure, they still have their share of serious bankers, lawyers and business professionals, but you can tell by the way they order.  On Wall Street, it’s a lot of black coffee, maybe with a Danish.  In D.C. it’s a croissant and latte and in Boston, it’s black tea and “that’s all thanks…I have my Dunkin Donut.”  

    But the prices were still high.  $3.25 for a hot drink, more if you wanted anything special.  Not that any coffee shop is taking change anymore.  More likely, people are scanning their debit card across a laser, totaling $11.25 or more.  But it’s a new day.  Coffee houses are as important as showers for the fortunate few and almost as much for the 99%.  Thank goodness for debit cards.


    Fortified with coffee and a superior scone, they go off to conquer the world, knowing that the working Joe can’t compete with his home brew and store bought donut.  The right breakfast separates the haves and the have-nots and creates confidence.  If you’re sitting down to a $39 breakfast buffet, you’ve already impressed your potential client.  He/She will go along (thanks to expense accounts), ignoring the cost, demonstrating that they are as comfortable in this venue as the mechanic getting his meal at McDonalds.


    That’s why this latest trend will catch on.  It’s a natural marriage, the combination of all that is required in today’s society with the convenience of starting the day off right.


    The Latina barista took off her apron and walked over to the man she had served.  “Well, it’s almost 9:00am, time I got to my day job.”  She kissed her husband, coming on for the day shift at the cafe and walked across the floor to take her place behind the bulletproof glass.  An older woman with a cane walked up to her, handed her a paper and smiled.  “Dear, can you put this social security check in my savings account?”  The Latina looked as beautiful behind the teller counter as she did at the café inside the bank.  “Certainly, Mrs. Wilson.  When you’re finished, you should try the Italian roast today.  It’s very good.” 


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Jerry Guarino’s short stories have been published by dozens of literary magazines in the United States, Canada, Australia and Great Britain. His first collection of twenty-six critically acclaimed stories, Cafe Stories, was released in October, 2011. It is available as a paperback on amazon.com and as an e-book on kindle.

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Author: Jerry Guarino