Snatched

“It is almost complete.”

These words wake me, but they sound strange. I understand them but there’s a delay, like my brain is processing another language. I force fatigue out of my mind as I shift my gaze around a poorly lit room. My heart skips at the sight of unconscious bodies, all neatly tucked into green organic looking pods.

Help! 

I try to scream, but nothing comes out. Muscles disobey commands as I fight to move, like in the moments after waking from a nightmare.

“Relax.” The voice is almost a hiss. “It’ll all be over soon.”

Hooky

Micro-Fiction contest entry: Hooky

“The key is to construct it at the nano-level.”

Cary glanced up, flashing a lopsided smile below a pair of black micro-optics goggles.

“Holy hell!” Tony leaned past her to regard the pristine signature she’d spent hours constructing. “It looks just like hers!”

“Well, technically it is hers.” She placed it next to a real copy of his mother’s.

Tony turned a mischievous eye towards his accomplice. “Skipping school has never been so easy! What should we do today?”

Grabbing a set of stolen keys to her father’s starship, Cary turned for the door.

“How’s Mars sound?"

Primetime Television

Primetime Television

by Mike Pollock

Holoscreens across America and the floating Provinces were tuned in as Tilly finally made her choice. With rapt attention, they saw her tumble from the teleporter door and over the edge of Angel Falls.

“Will she survive and have all crimes pardoned?” Host Carl Fry asked the nation of viewers. 
“Find out after these messages!”

***

Carl turned to Fip who stood in handcuffs just beside that same door. “Have you made your choice?”

The image of Tilly’s ruined body at the bottom of a waterfall unnerved him, but it was still his best chance.

“Carl…” Fip swallowed. “Dare.” 

Spare Some Change?

Kalet's fingers gripped the edges of his cup, rattling the few Harkats he'd been able to scam from passersby.

"Spare some change?" His voice was practiced, and more coins hit the bottom of his cup.

It took some time to perfect the blank stare, even if the milky cataracts of his eyes were as simple as reprogramming. Still, his pride was long since dead, as was his upper level access card, so he played the part and played it well.

The whirring of the gears moving beneath the surface of his organic skin was audible only to him as he shook the cup again.

"Spare some change?"

Rise

You're legs give out and you fall to the ground... you feel it's cold touch welcoming, pulling you against it like water settling between cracks. You're one with the world, and you hear it's call.

I am you whisper back, a ghost of a voice you barely recognize as your own. I am home. 

A frozen wind swirls up around you, a thief in the night stealing warmth from your limbs. You attempt a scream, it seems logical, but the gurgle is proof you have nothing left.

Take me you pray to the earth pressed to your cheek. I am yours.

"Rise."

One word, spoken with such command you dare not refuse. A pain wracked mind smiles hard as it sends signals to broken limbs. You feel the world spin, fading in and out of your visage as your slowly pull yourself away from your resting place. Dirt from the ground still clings to your face.

"Rise."

It is spoken again, from another place in the world. You feel it reverberate in sunken lungs as you pull to your feet. Bone grinds on bone as a stretch pulls at every corner of your body. The breath you thought was your last pours out of your mouth like smoke from a thurible.

"Rise."

It's louder now, it's words vibrating against your skin, hair lifting in anticipation. Your eyes are open, and surprise is your shell. The world around you is darkened by clouds, the distance illumnated by a smattering of lightning strikes.  You look at your hands, bruised and dirty, a life time of work.

"Rise!" The words come from your mouth, like a ragged angry breath. You feel it envigorate and full you with purpose. The word echoes around you, like wings beating in the wind. Rise the world echoes back, I am home.

Frost Bound

He stood silently, staring back across the featureless stretch of tundra he'd just crossed. It was becoming increasingly difficult for Tommo to tell how far he'd traveled or how long, since the Sun had refused to dance with the moon for several weeks now. He grunted at the thought of the bright nights. Sleeping was diffucult as it was in his world without the lights staying on.

His big wintercat Targa stood at his side and stared hungrily into the white mist thrown off of snow piles by whiping winds. Tommo had no doubts that she saw something in the distance that his eyes were incapable of seeing at this distance, but the big cat knew Tommo needed her more than she needed him.  She would never leave his side.

"Come, Targa." He smiled as he reached his hand down to her stark white mane. "We will walk." 

In unison they turned and continued into the wilderness.

In Silence Swings Our Agony

Whose frost fills these window frames
While outside blooms and brings spring rains?
The answer to the question blames
whose frost fill these window frames...

It's you I know, and who I'd be
If truths are told in mirrors seen
like bulbs at christmas red and green
It's you I know, and who I'd be...

Forsaken tokens from our past
left rusted broken in our wrath
Cold and wet a poor lit path
Forsaken tokens from our past...

In silence swings our agony
Sturdy limbs of oaken trees
The aching in our hearts to beat
In silence swings our agony...