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Dear Mr. Stevenson,

It's Jade, the annoying little philosophy student you had in junior year. I don't know if you remember me, but you're the only one I know who might understand what I'm feeling. Honestly, I'm in a crisis. I just finished my first semester, second year. I decided to major in magic. It was against the wishes of my parents, obviously. And like, 5 years ago it would have sent me to the psych ward to say something like that to a student councilor.

It was the most interesting thing...

Jerry decided to email his sister. He didn't really email things regularly. He didn't talk to people over email. It wasn't necessary. But today, his mother told him to be nice and send a thoughtful message. He was a slow typist, despite his job and had to look up at the screen every few keystrokes. He worked in cyber security for a local server warehouse. He had to leave for his afternoon shift soon, so he kept it short.

"Dear Sarah, I'm really happy for you. I hope you (don't take the bus)."...

I took my seat on the patio of my regular cafe. The chairs were a wicker-weaved metal frame bleached by continued exposure to the summer sun. The armrests rubbed down by the frequency of patrons. The table was a milky glass with a plastic flower set up in the middle. The flower never used to be white. It was bleached from its original yellow from years of sunlight. Nobody minded the white flower enough to get a new one. It was fine the way it was.

I looked over the edge of the patio into the...

I'm recording this for posterity. Kind of a story of how things got here. How the end happened... Well, if only I knew. Winter kept getting warmer, suddenly there was no winter. There was a heat wave in December in the northern hemisphere that broke all records. There was supposed to be snow in Montana, but not this time. People were terrified. We hadn't had snow for ten years prior, but a heat wave? It was killing livestock, burning crops. Anyone who wasn't taking water from a lake ran out...

I grasped the little pill in my fingers and eyeballed the little man from the other side of the bathroom. Any creature being in the toilet during nature's call is my worst nightmare. I had shot myself up and palmed the shower curtain between me and him. And only carefully did I reach out to grab it when he insisted with urgency that it was necessary.

Normally, you don't take pills from strangers. Yeah, I get it. It was stupid that I fell for it. But I took the thing because he said he would go...

I stood over the edge of rocks mired by time and fear. The blue-black mix of patterns betrayed a primordial evil that threatened to leak into our world in all directions. From the abyss endless crags of sharp, igneous structures trailed off in the distance eventually becoming mountains of sharp spires challenging the clouds for dominance. The wind was warm compared to the freezing stillness besides. It was as if all the life and energy was being sucked from the air here. It forced it from my...

I woke up to a rumbling crash. I ran out of my bedroom at the fastest pace that my discordant sleepiness would allow. My jaw locked itself open. There was a bloody car in my living room. The driver was obscured by the white balloon of the airbag which may or may not have saved their life. By the time the wall of my apartment building had finished with the front of the vehicle I couldn't tell what model it was. I looked past the car and found there to be a line of people keeping their distance...

It had been ten minutes. Sam looked at the clock with focus and patience. He had gathered both the clients and the tellers of the bank and lined them up against the street facing windows, looking outside. He had to be sure the police wouldn't shoot at him.

"He'll be here." Sam said, trying to reassure himself. One hostage could leave for every minute he got to talk to Senior Detective Carl Weiss, Sam's father. That was the deal he made on the phone. He heard the cruisers pull up outside,...