At first, he was not aware of what woke him. Quiet filled the dark room, broken only by the breathing of the naked woman lying next to him. But then, as his eyes adjusted to the night, he saw the funny little man. The plump figure was rocking back and[…]
Read moreAuthor: Keith McLachlan
A writer by early morning/later night, and a Fund Manager on the JSE during the day (running the www.smallcaps.co.za blog).
The Sunflower King
Frozen, he watched the little bird die. Its fragile chest rose and fell. Wild eyes staring out towards oblivion as its fluttering heart mechanically pumped its blood into the earth. He was surrounded by withering sunflowers–his family’s old farm–and their brilliant explosions of yellow contrasted against the dark land beneath[…]
Read moreAutumn Leaves
Autumn could not pull her eyes away from the window. Outside the bare trees stood like naked guardians to the oncoming Winter, all their leaves staining the ground with a bloody tapestry. Their stark branches twisted into the grey sky like barren skeletal reminders of life against an oncoming apocalypse.[…]
Read moreThe Big Black Bird
I like to think that I was born in a faraway realm under some wicked curse. My parents loved me–as best as they could–and life was alright in that land–sometimes good, sometimes bad, but mostly fine–but my curse followed me wherever I went. My curse was ever-present: its flapping black[…]
Read moreCosmic Candyfloss
“That tickles! Gosh, that tickles!” one of the girls exclaimed as the Pulsar radiation bursts blasted through the group of them, “Who would have thought that world-ending radiation would tickle!” They all had a good chuckle at that and took in the sight before them. They stood on an elliptical[…]
Read moreThe Last & Only Hero
She ran her fingers along the crumbling walls as she walked down the fractured road, weeds growing from every crack. She was walking through one of the carcasses of the old cities. The weathered concrete disintegrated under her light touch, its dust caught by the warm wind and carried out[…]
Read moreThe Weaving Woman
“We would be honoured if you could weave a story for our wedding,” said the boy before her. He hovered awkwardly on his knees. Glancing nervously at his young bride, he flopped forward putting his forehead to the ground in her hut. “Please, Ma’at,” the young girl added, also bowing,[…]
Read moreThe Necromancer
He paused and looked back one last time. His throat caught and he clenched his fists. In the fading twilight, the mountainside stretched down towards the pooling darkness of the land far below and the ocean beyond that. He knew that amidst the forests, farms lay nestled down there, villages[…]
Read morePicture in the Locket
“Who’s that there?” the gruff question was a bit prying but mostly innocuous. “N-nothing! No one!” she mumbled and closed the locket before tucking it back under her torn, blue scrubs, “No one, ok, none of your business. He is mine!” The two of them were lying on cardboard sheets[…]
Read moreSupra Humanum Imperium
Jason saw the colours before he felt the pain. Spotlights flared down on him from some vast urban backdrop as armed people in blue and black swarmed around him. He was pinned to the ground with a piercing weighting on his back and his hands held there with cold metal[…]
Read moreThe Music at Sea
In the late summer, before the storms began to roll in, Mary Antoinette Athelard drowned herself, or so the police said and the newspapers reported. And, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, that is what happened. In the small hours of the morning when the world[…]
Read moreEndangered Species
Embla loved the sunsets the most. They would both climb the small hill outside the House and, breathless and panting, plop themselves down on the top of it. She would tuck her arm around her brother, Ask, and lay her head on his shoulder while the two of them wordlessly[…]
Read moreAfter Zero
No one knew why the Founders had left but the best anyone could tell was that one day the Founders were just not there anymore. No wars or plagues had ravaged the City, no tectonic events or extreme weather had caused their world to end. In fact, everything looked fine.[…]
Read moreThe Irritation of Undying
In the summer of 1938, I died horrifically. What is more disconcerting than this fact was that my consciousness remained behind in a disembodied form. As a rigid scientist and staunch atheist, the matter of me becoming a ghost rather irked me. I had originally been visiting my great-grandmother on[…]
Read moreThose That Live Longest
She first met him beneath the Stars in the Age before Man. Those were quieter times and there were fewer words for violence and war back then. The First King had just past and his Memorial Year was proceeding. Renditions of his great deeds and the Ages passed were being[…]
Read moreThe Cost of Divinity
After Professor Usir solved human mortality by inventing a pill that froze you on a cellular level and stopped ageing, he had more money and time than god himself. While the former was useful, the latter was critical to his ultimate goal: time travel. In the background, the initial boom[…]
Read moreThe Hunger in the North
He had been following her for three months as her trail cut across the country. She had started by the coast, moved inland, hit the other coast, and then veered North in what began as a zigzagged-dawdle that steadily picked up pace, intent and ferocity. He had started about a[…]
Read moreMr. Rupert
The tendrils of space stretched around Ronald Rupert like the limbs of a lover interrupted only by fragments of his ship’s wreckage floating by. Great tails reached out from galactic gas clouds like curtains on a cosmic stage, curling around the endless blackness filled with countless twinkling balls of fusion.[…]
Read moreAstronought
“Initiating Zero Sequence,” the lab-coated scientist announced to the tense room, military presence lurking behind him, “Space-time is stabilizing on our induced micro-ergosphere…” The room was filled with all manner of blinking lights and buzzing machines, white lab-coated scientists staring at screens and measuring things while a small group of[…]
Read moreBeginning & End
She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face and matting her auburn hair against her face. The blue light behind his head encircled him like a mournful halo, the background room fading away. Then the moment passed. The flashing blue lights outside the window revealed the weapons and[…]
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