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Latest Stories

March 19, 2024
Fantasy Stories Wondering Monk

Just My Imagination

The alarm clock went off and started playing an awful tune. Tom opened his eyes and closed them back, squinting. He reopened one eye and stood up to stop the torture. The phone was on the desk, in the furthest spot from the bed. Although he changed his way of…
March 19, 2024
Science Fiction Stories Ocelotlzin

Earth Is Dead

Recording… It doesn't matter who I was; I probably lived a long time ago, and I am now just a voice someone added to the audio-visual records. What is essential is the recollection of events that lead to the current state. So, a little history needs to be…
March 08, 2024
Flash Fiction Benoit

Some Enchanted Evening

It was a rugby tackle with tears: Chrissy burst in, sobbing and babbling, hugging James. Her face was all wet, eyes wild. What…? My parents split up, Dad has moved in with his boyfriend and I cannot join them. I am shut out. I have lost my dad. Torrent of…
March 08, 2024
Horror Stories Marvel Chukwudi Pephel

In The Hands Of My Legs

The car pulled up in front of the large salon. The neon sign, that sexy broad thing, on the salon'sroof read "Mr. Gil's All-night Salon". The exhaust pipe of the car was pumping solid smoke, theswirls moving from the car and towards the salon.…
March 07, 2024
Mystery Stories Vanessa Leigh Giles

Casualty of Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Chapter 1 Until Death do us Part ‘Ring, ring!’. I answered the telephone and asked, “Hello, good evening. Who’s this? “Hello.” This is Dr. Smith from Red Cross hospital. “Is this Mr. Locke, John?”, he asked, hesitantly scratching his bald head. “Yes, doctor.…
March 07, 2024
Crime Stories Robert Pook

Bar Room Trigger

Another return journey on footpaths so familiar. He strides across each crack in each paving stone. Regular loose drain covers sidestepped. Mapping long ago mapped in Richard’s desolate mind. His pace hastened by the sight of the oncoming storm. Quickening…
March 04, 2024
Horror Stories Ano Chinemerem

Sanctity

Where should I begin? I could begin by telling you about this comely boy, whom every notable person around the streets agrees his smile could charm the bills off one. Between one smile, there was his goodness, his dreams and humanity—a little far ahead?— but…
March 04, 2024
Flash Fiction Emanuel Diaz

Et Mortui Partium

As Rafael stepped out into the rain, it wasn't the ordinary drops that fell from the sky. Instead, it was a storm of souls, each one taking the form of shimmering jewelry as it cascaded toward the ground. Rubies, diamonds, and sapphires twinkled amidst the…
February 29, 2024
Poetry Jing Li Ava

London

‘Am I in London?’ "I am." Where is Elizabeth? Happy living story All of your chapter Bounlance joy Please my heart Power hand Wise mind Our baby Vow vow Love all love Miss I miss Endless wonder Bring us together Love all love Miss I miss For everything My…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Rob Pook

Life Sentence of The Smith

Born nine months after his country won the World Cup.A child prodigy.Cast off at age twenty-four.Husband, father, emigree, away on the other side of the world.The blue-collar life.The dreams of success.The search for fulfillment.The long years of empty…
February 29, 2024
Mystery Stories Joshua Lowther

The Operator

Jason looked over to his right, his eyes barely able to focus themselves on the subject of his attention. His neck ached terribly from the strenuous movement. He was tired. The captain’s gaze came to rest on the rookie sonar operator sitting tense at his…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Salvatore Difalco

The Chute

At dusk, we left our unit with a soft pink bundle. I carried it through the wet streets and into the black woods. I said I’d take it all the way, the bundle, but that we had to drop it in together. My wife’s green eyes flashed. “Don’t make me do that.” I…

I never knew my mother. She left when I was very young. My family told me stories about her, they told me she loved me, but they would not tell my why she left. That truth came when I became an adult. It came after I was married, after I had a child of my own. My life was supposed to be normal until then, as normal as it could be under the circumstances. My people needed me to be normal. They needed me to have children. They needed me to love and to feel loved. It was a necessary part of the tradition.

When I turned twenty eight I learned my mother’s fate. Mother had gone to live inside the Kraken. It was a monster that lived in the sea. It was the queen of the monsters. She was the largest and strongest of her kind and ruled over her brood, her many children. They were massive beasts that stood taller than our tallest skyscrapers. They came in the thousands devouring everything in their path. They came to destroy us with fire, ice, and lightning. We had tried to stop them with conventional weaponry, but our atom bombs were more damaging to us than they were to the monsters.

So we hid like rats. We survived. We rebuilt our civilization, and our scientists came up with a new strategy. They called it the traditional sacrifice. There would be no more bombs, no more missiles, no more guns. Instead we would sway the Kraken’s heart with love and compassion. This new technology determined the fate of my grandmother and her mother and my mother and my children. They would sacrifice me to the beast, implant my love for my son in the Kraken’s heart so all the people of earth would become her children.

I went willingly to meet my mother, catapulted across the sky in a translucent sphere, the vehicle of our new technology. It was a ship, an orb filled with a living mucus in which I floated. Ailerons on the hull guided my craft through the air ensuring my success. I would enter through her nose, a pair of massive holes on the front of her flat face. I was so tiny in comparison it was almost imposible to miss. But I was blind to all of these things. Operating the craft was not my job. I was just a passanger. I was just a piece of the machine.

The orb was sucked in as the Kraken prepared her next roar. Inside her head my ship dispensed with its little wings as it flexed and tumbled along the beasts inner membranes. Long thin claws grew in their place, tearing at the creatures flesh to halt my momentum. I heard them popping and stretching and breaking and hooking again as they brought my craft to a stop.

It was dark now. I am not a scientist, but I was aware of how the sphere worked. It began stealing nutrients from my host to sustain me. It would grow legs like a spider and begin the journey up to the brain. I felt the beast clawing at her nose though I was sure my craft was causing her little pain. The ship was designed to invade her skull, not kill her or torture her. This was a surgical operation designed to reach her grey matter.

When the hull contacted her brain I could feel her rage transmitting through the ship’s mucus into my mind. But this connection was a two way street. I was a pychic infection, and she could feel me. I came here to tell her about a baby boy living in the city she was about to destroy. But I didn’t come just to talk, I came to make her feel what I felt. I let her feel the love I had from my son, and she in turn let me feel the love she had for her children. Our love became one, and we decided to let my people live another day. We called her children back to the sea and saved my world from destruction.

My society would live another day, perhaps another decade or longer until the antibodies in the beast’s brain ate their way through my ships hull. Then the Kraken would forget my love for my son and return for the next sacrifice. But by then maybe my son would be a man with his own children. And perhaps on that day the beast will discover the love in his heart.

About the Author:  A. I. Bloom has worked as a web designer, a fine artist, a home renovator, and a stage hand in theatre. He’s from Minnesota and loves cooking, playing with his cats, and watching movies on Netflix. He started writing fantasy and science fiction short stories for fun during college and was encouraged by friends and family to publish his work. MATILDA THE STONE FAIRY was Bloom’s first published piece of fantasy fiction. Look for more of his work in 2015.

 

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