"I want to die"

       “There’s a suicide clinic down the road.” Alendine Trippet kept her half-moon glasses fixed on the report before her. If she had a credit for each time an adrenaline junkie or bored debutante had made this request, she would have had her own house inside one of the Domes.

Christina2

       It had been three weeks, and every day when Sera went to work at Rawlins, McGuire and Smith, and each day she had to step over the woman who had set up shop on the steps leading up to the place. Sera wasn’t wealthy: she, like all of the others living below the Domes, scraped by on her wits and good luck.

The Saint- Part Three

There was a special section of the city that hadn’t fallen into complete and utter ruin like the rest. It was nestled against one of the umbilical poles holding up a Dome , and the four or five buildings that stood there actually looked clean and almost elegant until the smog cleared a little and one stood within fifty feet of them.

The Saint-Part Two

      “You really expect me to get on that thing?” Karen scowled at Robert and she gently kicked at the front tire of an ancient motorcycle.

Perfection 2000

        Sergeant Airen Dey sat awkwardly at the edge of the spa bed, her eyes fixed on the tiled floor that was almost entirely clouded in shadow, considering that the only light in the room came from four candle simulations that had been brought in to make the mood more womb-like and relaxing, or at least that is what the pamphlet had said.

Les Bercaux

       In New Crimea, there were the wealthy, the poor, and the people who were so penniless that they belonged to a new group entirely.

Into the Fire

            Without fail, every time that the stench of gasoline sputtered into the crisp, choking billows of smoke, the red and amber gleam of the flames lighting up the inside of the warehouse, Art felt the same sting of excitement in his guts,

The Saint – Part One

Life had become a series of binary choices for Karen Comstock. Rent or telephone bill? Food or electricity? Karen had quickly discovered that desperation and stress can temper the strong and crush the vulnerable, and she had become as brittle as porcelain.

The Prodigal Father

The machine whirred to a stop, and as soon as it had shut down, the two technicians shot each other meaningful looks. The man inside was one of the Serpent’s top paying customers and every week he spent an entire day inside the Love Machines without more than a quick break in between sessions to down some nutrient supplements and mop his brow.

An Ordinary World

Todd Adams sat in his boss’s office on the eighteenth floor of the Guardian Insurance Company with his head lowered. He knew that Peter Stewart saw any sort of personal issue as a distraction but he couldn’t wait any longer. “Yes, Todd.”

“I need time to be with my son. He’s very ill.”

            “You’ll have to wait.”

The Mothman Story

            “So,” Johnnie Taylor smiled awkwardly at the technician who was prepping his machine, his hands questing to cover his genitals as he stood before her stark naked, “Is this the weirdest request you have gotten?”

Hot Shave

            Taro leaned over the desk at the front of the Green Serpent’s waiting room and sighed to himself as a patron walked outside, giggling and wiping the sweat from his brow. It was near the end of his shift and he was looking forward to getting back to the tenement he shared with four other technicians, all of them sporting matching black tracks from N2. He was just about to begin shutting down his monitor when the door opened and a man who looked as if he were minutes away from geriatric annihilation wandered inside. 

Love Sick

         His breath stirred the short hairs on the nape of her neck as he slid his lips over her skin, his hands moving to cup her breasts as their bodies moved together, the sweat dripping from his brow onto her throat, making her quiver with desire...
 (I must warn, as you can probably tell this is a most titillating tale so read on only if you are of appropriate age and mindset
-the management)

Of Serpents and Jade

The building was dumpy and small, with no name painted above the door. It was in an area of town long ago zoned for demolition, but due to the city’s managerial absentmindedness it had been allowed to thrive, bristling with black-market warehouses, brothels, N2 dens and this place, marked with only the twisted green coils of a spray painted dragon over its door.

Dear Mr. President

         The doors slid shut behind the imposing figure of the President’s personal body guard, his slender but rippling muscles looking like they were about to spill out from under the light standard-issue ceramic armor he wore. He turned to the slight woman beside him and whispered in Kathleen’s ear.

Welcome to the Serpent

         John’s heart raced in his ears as he looked down at the body of his dead partner. Alex’s face was half-buried in the snow, her eyes glazed and facing forward, the shotgun blast that killed her having transformed her head into a half-shell, like an egg smashed on the pavement.