The wind had no mercy that night. Kund Malir stretched before me like a forgotten promise, the highway’s asphalt dissolving into sand and shadow. My car’s headlights barely pierced the darkness; the desert swallowed everything else. I had been driving for…

Michelle had fully expected to find one or two beer corpses in the tents in the garden the morning after her wedding. However, she hadn’t expected to find the body on the bricked round barbecue. Now that she saw her cousin lying there with the barbecue spit…

Professor Elena Viktorovna Moshnyaga always said one thing to her students in Moscow: “Intercultural communication does not live in books. It lives in people. “Anastasia believed her. Or at least she wanted to. So, when Elena told her about the short cultural…

The city was a carcass. Neon signs flickered like dying stars over streets lined with broken glass, trash fires, and bodies nobody bothered to move. The cops didn’t like coming here much anymore. Too much static. Too much nothing. Too many junkies, as they…

As Scot walked away his sense of danger triggered. He glanced back. Out of the night in the pale moonlight numerous dark entities were converging along his flanks like wolves ringing an elk. They ghosted closer, closing in. Scot's hand under his coat stroked…

His contorted face will haunt the rest of my life, they all do, as his blood splatters adorned the wall in a macabre painting adding to the festive colors of the yuletide season. Making sure my contract was fulfilled I pumped two more silenced bullets into…

In the drowned city of Nueva Esperanza, where the rain never ceased and the streets glowed with the like of broken billboards, Mateo lived alone in a crumbling tower. The elevators had long since stopped, so he climbed the stairs each night, counting them,…

She walked into the office, sighting him by the desk hunched over, seemingly looking tired of waiting for her. She made way to her seat, sat down and took her glasses off, gently placing them on the table. Watching his face and body language, she sought signs…

It was never violent. The famous host, tall and spindly as a stork, perched at a podium where the all-powerful Machine, hidden somewhere deep in the bowels of the Propaganda Ministry, displayed a bundle of numbers on the screen. The host smiled heartily, and…

Jared was half dozing at his desk, listening to relaxing ocean sounds on his phone, when a small alarm beeped and flashed on his computer screen, then another. He clicked on one and leaned forward to see the details. The alert gave a time hack and said,…

 Supervisory CIA agent Kelly Oshanonhand stirred in her sleep disturbed by something. The moonlight beamed through a gap in the curtains of her hotel room offering some visibility in the darkness. Kelly had long, fluffy blond hair and bright blue--green hazel…

I screamed in agony for a week; burning, every cell in my body on fire. The injections were easy enough, once a day for seven days. Being strapped up in bed beside several others screaming in a symphony of holy torture wasn't. "How are you doing, Mr. James?…