“Barry, is your homework finished?”

It would be hours before he realized he’d been completely swallowed by his carpet.

When the wind blew really hard all the derricks had to be towed in off the lake. Usually it chased us off around ten. So my shift began with the promise of a shutdown. I would gather up the rangemen to go out in the skiff anyway, just to make a showing. I was home by one and could listen to the wind howl in my basement apartment till I fell asleep. The next night would be awful with me tired and everything. You should never get out of that night shift rhythm, no matter how good the wind sounds.

From Guest Contributor Paul Smith

The Nazis arrived in Poland stomping down the street showing their authority. My mother was in the kitchen cooking dinner, the smell of vegetables wafting in the air, and my father had the radio on listening to the broadcast of the invasion. I sat next to him and stared out the window. For no apparent reason, one of the soldiers kicked a man that stood on the sidewalk with I’m assuming his young daughter. The girl screamed when the man collapsed in a heap. Was this the world now? No one was safe.

The next day I joined the resistance.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Enlo’s shallow breaths barely inhaled enough oxygen to maintain consciousness as he summited. Another goal accomplished. He surveyed the crests of the tallest mountains searching for some meaning to it all.

He started his descent. Nothing left but to punish the world for the misery it had brought him.

He passed the tax building, now being slowly demolished.

Soon – like him – it would be gone forever.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

George’s wait–a few moments or a million years, it’s difficult to tell the difference–comes to an end as his number is called. The angel at his window looks over his paperwork perfunctorily before giving his folder the rubber stamp.

“Being good isn’t enough. Like I said, we’re exclusive.”

Leaving is always hard, especially when you think you’ve finally found a place to settle. Among the things I’ll miss about this world and its nascent civilisation are the secret songs hummed by pylons, and the brooding silences of daytime streetlights. Perhaps its denizens will evolve someday to not need that artificial interconnectedness that’s so important to them, but I won’t be around to find out. My time, like theirs, has expired: the Vsanic are here, camouflaged, probing, scouting the planet, and I, a fugitive from their cold, imperial justice, must leave before they find me. Time to run, again.

From Guest Contributor Alastair Millar