Forbidden Fruit

(Preview)





The light coming through the blinds was that bruised, late-September orange, striping across the rumpled fitted sheet and sweat cooling on Lucy’s ribs. She was lying on her stomach, her cheek mashed into a flat pillow that smelled like cheap laundry detergent and stale dab smoke. Her back was long and pale, marked with red pressure creases from th

The Human Zooby Scratch T.L. “Hey Jack, wanna go to the zoo?” Jack’s ears perked up. He was enjoying his meager breakfast of basic oats and grain as well as some ‘flavor enhancing’ tablets his tigress girlfriend insisted on him eating, even though they tasted like a really strong calcium chew, when she walked through the door without knocking and proposed the invitation.  Usually the donkey would be annoyed at the breach of his morning routine and what it would mean fo

The park path stretched ahead of her like a wound in the dark, cracked asphalt splitting open under the yellow wash of sodium lamps. Bree walked slowly, one hand pressed to the swell of her belly where it pushed against the thin cotton of her shirt, the fabric damp from the evening’s humidity and clinging to the curve where her navel had long since disappeared. Rain

was

coming. She could smell it

Mother Knows Beast

(Preview)





At 3:14 AM, the heavy mahogany door of Henry’s bedroom swung open. He blinked against the sudden intrusion of hallway light, his vision blurring as his twin brother, Douglas, grabbed his shoulder and shook him awake.




"Get up," Douglas muttered, his voice taut with a m

Our days began to settle into a rhythm. My every waking moment was spent between the hulls or running to get oxygen from Cygnus’ backpack. Hours blurred past, the mess that had been made of the Horizon’s Promise’s wiring harness taking all my skill and not a little improvisation to get functional again. I ran out of spare wiring on the first day. Nonessential systems were harvested next, but it still wasn’t enough. Around the fourth day, I was stealing parts from the life support and doo

In the near future, the United States government has collapsed, giving way to a conglomerate of massive corporations and industries that now rule through unchecked financial power and rampant political corruption. The takeover was never military, as it was far more insidious. These entities seized control by embedding themselves into every aspect of daily life, turning citizens into extremely passive and dependent consumers.

Through relentless subliminal messaging, overw

How to Train your Slime Creature
 
 
Part 1: Reboot Protocol
 
Five years had passed since that fateful first boot.
 
Dr. Elara Kane’s underground lab had evolved into something far more sophisticated. Reinforced walls hummed with quiet energy, automated containment fields shimmered faintly in the air, and redundant power grids pulsed with steady reliability. The flaws of that night were long corrected. The cyborg, now named Lyra, a designation Elara chose on a whim one

First Boot: A Lesson in Unintended Hungers
 
Dr. Elara Kane and her older sister, Dr. Mira Kane, had always chased the impossible together. As children, they’d torn apart radios to rebuild them better; as adults, they’d turned a derelict warehouse basement into a clandestine lab humming with forbidden ambition. Tonight, under flickering fluorescent tubes and the low drone of cooling fans, they were about to birth something no ethics board would ever sanction.
 
“We can’t fabr

The Experiment

(Preview)











Aaron had always been a disappointment to his mother.







Susan had made that clear since the moment he graduated high school and failed to land a steady job. He h

I'm pretty new in this strange place.


But at least I have a nice roommate.


We have been talking for a while now. It was pretty nice.


But he mentioned he still has something to do today.



So he gets up.



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