Neumatikos

365 Tomorrows, a science fiction weblog, has a new story up by yours truly. They specialize in something they call “flash fiction,” which they describe as 500 words or less, So it’s a quick read.

However, I urge caution. It’s not for the faint of heart.

This story is a repost from August 7, 2002. But I was thinking of it today, and made a few stylistic changes. Happy reading!

This is a story about two sisters who were the same age, and lived alone in a big house in the middle of a great field. Their names (if you’ll [...]

Well Jon, it sounds like you’re depressed.

No kidding.

Well, it’s important to say it. When I was a kid, I used to get 2-3 colds a year, but I was raised to insist that my sinuses were just sensitive to air pressure changes. But you know, colds have a set of typical symptoms, things [...]

“Now I pass beyond these gates of time.”

Those were the last words of Elizabeth Rachel LeMontre. It was another fifteen minutes before she died, but she didn’t say anything after that. I think she wanted to have famous last words, and those were the best she could think of, so she [...]

Jeremy Flynn was 7 miles from the Tennessee State line when he remembered the livermush and Cheerwine. He immediately took his foot off the gas, but it was too late: the sign for exit 7 was already swishing past him. He accelerated again and started looking for another road sign. Karen wanted [...]

What do you mean when you say, “worship?”

Worship is simply pleasing God.

But how do you please a god you have never seen, whose voice you have never physically heard?

There’s a legend in our village, I don’t know how old it is. Sure it was an old story when I was a boy. There was this great city that stood on this very spot. No one knows any longer the name of that city, it was so long ago, but we [...]

When my sons were first born, I thought I should be a happy man. I mean: five! Who could not help but be a happy man?! My darling Rebecca, she gave birth to five boys all at once. Well, not all at once: it took her all the night. [...]

Once upon a time, upon a little hill in the middle of nowhere, stood a little blond-headed girl about the age of thirteen. And although she probably had any number of faults, there was one that stood out terribly to her: She loved. She loved with a terrible fierceness of devotion and [...]

The lion looked at me with a gleam in his eye.

“Will you come in?”

He looked like some Egyptian monument; his haunches reached up as much as forty feet; his head was twice as tall as me. Settling down on his belly, he placed his head near the ground before me, and opened [...]