Roulette Reality 1: Fire

Roulette reality one, spin and fire. They called it a hammer, a trigger: it was in truth a massive burst of energy drawn off from a caged singularity that they used to slice and dice reality into chunks that their quantum computer told them were there. Comparing it to a gun seemed somewhat childish to [...]

some time later

‘You’re acting like a child.’
‘I never took any lessons.’
‘My, then you must be a natural.’
‘Thank you. I have to admit that I am having trouble remembering your name.’
‘That is because we erased it from your mind. We are not letting your reality survive.’
‘No? And how do you intend to prevent it surviving? Isn’t reality a [...]

the scheme of things

The first Brewlat, the original, the one from the prime timeline, the one from which all others branched off (for they had proved that theory to within an inch of its life) had to build a dimension jumper to travel to wherever his doppelganger had come from and prevent him from building a dimension jumper. [...]

word gains 1

I know that when they sit there and they read the words that I have put down that they are not reading the story, they are reading me. It is good to sometimes have the distance of anonymity between you and your readers. If every described suicide, every murderer, and every zany idea expressed reflects [...]

End Transmission

Some stories are just too violent and horrible to be told; that was how he felt. But they came to him unbidden and if he didn’t put them down on paper and get them out of him he knew that they were going to poison him – that they would pool like toxic waste in [...]

Grit: Breather 1

Grit smiled. A fucking rest – just what he needed after all this time spent chasing numb nuts around and putting bullets in the back of their heads. He had the easel set up and he had some jazz playing – Mingus, he felt, was perfect for the painting of watercolours. This landscape was something [...]

Grit: Standover 1

Standover men were muscle-drive machines on the whole – people that had just enough grey matter to know that they were not bright enough to hatch master plans that were going to bring them riches beyond compare, but just enough cunning to know how to trap those who could. Occasionally you would get one that [...]

Grit: Vacuum 1

Grimoire was gone and Grit knew that this would result in a rush to assume alpha dog status amongst the heretofore small fish of the pond. It was a great business opportunity to play all ends off against the middle. None of these jokers would be a big enough threat to him even combined if [...]

Write In 1

Everyone has a book in them. I was born with a pen in my hand. He had the scars to prove the first one and the photographs to prove the second. He was baptised in ink and now it slid over his skin like a memory. He wrote everywhere that he could – his house [...]

Sidewalk Chalk Heart

They’d expunged the murder from his permanent record because after long and careful consideration they had determined that the victim was of no real significance and that the resources his death had freed up may mean that in death he was actually able to contribute positively to society, something he had been unable, as far [...]