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Latest Stories

July 08, 2025
General Stories Michael Barlett

Dance Of Death

CHAPTER ONE 1940 Chief Inspector Kenneth Langford offered the Commissioner a crisp salute, and then walked back through the labyrinth of passageways to his own small office. Langford was a member of the London Metropolitan Police, commonly referred to as…
July 08, 2025
Poetry Markus J

The Winter Blues

the winter blues has a grip on me, all so tight Its icy tentacles wrap around me and squeezes freezing my fingers and toes with its nasty frostbite staving off the cold is a battle, an endless fight it brings forth an assortment of nasty diseases The winter…
July 08, 2025
Horror Stories Sushma R Doshi

Deliverer Of Messages

A loner in my childhood, my scrawny and weak figure prone to being bullied by sturdy and robust boys, I tended to wander around places frequented by few. Those curvy roads which fell into darkness after evening without street lights, the area near the pond…
July 08, 2025
General Stories L Christopher Hennessy

With A Side-Eye I Cherish

for Brittany ma amour Up to my neck in sadness for something just out of reach and she came along and fired up my life with kisses and the physical. The moment I looked into her eyes I didn't want to share her with anyone else and keep her all to myself. In…
July 03, 2025
Poetry Markus J

The Days Of Future Dreams

the days of future dreams the flames once rose high thinking our lives would end up supreme thinking our future seemed a far of dream but in the end nothing is what it seems many times the winds of changed has blown this way one minute we`re lapping the cream…
July 03, 2025
General Stories L Christopher Hennessy

Bad Girl

Part 1I lost the entire manuscript when I assassinated my laptop with sauvignon blanc as I rubbed the lower back of a woman who dozed drunk on my bed, sweating. She was crazed, somewhere between screaming and lying about the orgasm. Bree was a miracle to me,…
July 03, 2025
Horror Stories Nelly Shulman

Black Is Our Colour

“I swear she could have been you. Look! This girl is your long-lost twin.” Fi nudged me, and I smiled. “Never had or wanted one.” I stood up. “Let’s go, or the bargain hunters will clear the shelves before us.” We dived into the vintage emporium across the…
July 03, 2025
Poetry Markus J

The Transformation

"I need a brake" words that twisted my heart- shattering the dream that we would never part. I asked myself 'what ever did I do wrong? sad, gloominess could`ve easily been my song. I wouldn't let the anger and misery grow or cultivate- uprising feelings I…
July 03, 2025
Flash Fiction Benoit

Jae

It was Jae’s birthday today. She turned eight. What a beautiful sunny girl! Hyo planned a surprise or two; Li, his wife, did too. Birthday cake, a puppy and … Don’t forget, they grinned just before he drove off. Traffic was intense. A long call came from…
July 03, 2025
General Stories Matias Travieso-Diaz

Fear

Leandro stood outside the Kroger, leaning forward as he shivered in the early March dawn. He hated this moment: the cold, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness, the anticipation of another day ahead at his degrading job picking collard leaves under the…
July 03, 2025
Horror Stories Mihko Askiweno

Found You

Panic gripped her as she staggered up the steep, rocky incline, breath coming in jagged, shallow gasps. Sweat streamed down her face in torrents, her hair clinging to her forehead and cheeks in disheveled clumps. Her legs trembled with exhaustion, molten fire…
July 03, 2025
Poetry Markus J

Lost On The Path

But alas; sometimes I think we've lost our way- too many strayed opinions...one too many a survey. Walking on the road ahead, just following the herd of sheep- with a hypnotised mind, wide awake yet very fast asleep. While yelling...join the team of the…

What a keen sensation it gave me! Riding on a night-bullet-train, head out the window, sharp daggers of air against my face. Yes, I stole the diamonds. And it felt good.

The only problem was that I knew you'd soon catch up with me. Then I’d be reduced. Made into a regurgitated bean. A regurgitated bean is like stew that’s been sitting for three days and all the water’s boiled from it and only a composite crud – a hideous conjunction of carrots and broiled pork – lies pellet-like at the bottom. I don’t want to eat those beans any more. Or to be reduced, made into a bean. Which is worse? But I won't tell you where the diamonds are.

The worst thing that ever happened was the great electrical collapse, fifty years ago. When the only source of protein became those regurgitated beans. I used to work with a GM cow that made them. God, I hated that cow. Maybe stealing the diamonds was my way of rebelling against the monster.

When the electron-feeders finished with our power, I reached a dead end with my life. Before the collapse I'd worked as a technical consultant on power stations. What vocation was there for me after the power disappeared? None. So yes, I worked at the new GM production suite for a while, all powered by steam, like in the old days. Steam powered by charcoal. The dead embers of our once mighty civilisation. We pillaged the skeletons of our dead to feed our new society. Nasty, wasn't it, how the electron-feeders, once they ran out of electricity, started feasting like ghouls on our bodies, robbing our precious electrons, of cats and dogs and animals, leaving condensed bare carbon-forms in their stead. Diamonds became worthless. You know all that, I'm just an old man talking nonsense. You don’t know how the shiny metallic purple diamonds stopped it all. No-one knows that. There was some kind of reaction, a bad reflection that set up a chain of destruction amongst the electron-feeders. Subatomic prions, some say: a pseudo-image that changed the shape of the electron-feeders and killed them. I don't know.

Why did I steal the diamonds? Maybe to teach us a lesson. I had the opportunity, once you sent me to the plant where the diamonds were being kept. Maybe I was fed up being told how things would be when we finally rebuilt this place. We screwed up the last world and I'm certain we'll screw up the next one. What will happen when the electron-feeders come back and no-one knows where the diamonds have gone? No, I won't tell you where they are. Go ahead, feed me to the GM cow. Did you know that GM cows can digest anything from carbon to adamantium? Yes, it's true. By the way, the diamonds are in my guts.

 

End

 

Erwan Atcheson is a research scientist at Oxford, working on a malaria vaccine. He has previously published "The Bollocks" in The Albatross; "A Quiet Place…," a lengthy horror poem, in the Horror Zine; and his first novel The Big Pink is published on Amazon and Smashwords.

 

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