A twisted, pale figure writhing in agony, chest bare and hideous. Tight, rigid cords of sickly green veins webbed across the boy’s body and limbs, like ropes under his skin. Purplish bruises covered the kid,...

Homo sapiens! The name itself was an irony. They had not been wise at all, but incredibly stupid. Lords of the Earth with their great gray brains, their thinking minds had placed them above all...

When it comes to matters of the heart, immortals know nothing.

Time for the world to end.

should know that freedom is more important than being safe.

A mix of revenge, sadness and anger funnels into a decision that’s so simple and neat, it could fit in my pocket. I will help Kudzu destroy Aevum. Just like Magnus destroyed my mother.

Eric, you need to look at the whole picture,” the PM said. “You look at the jobless as a huge pile of scrap and you’re looking for what can be recycled. That’s good. That’s your...

Oh that voice, so sweet. Rich, like the taste of vanilla ice cream, vowels like flute music, warm caramel consonants. She could float in that voice forever and not miss a thing.

They say that when people still rode on vehicles powered by oil, they could go anywhere they wanted.

…I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life railing against the game of soccer, an exercise that has been lauded as “the sport of the future” since 1977. Thankfully, that future dystopia has never...

Two-thirty comes during Testifying. It’s Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion.But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger. Her fault, her fault, her...

He saw the rules of life clearly for the first time and they were simple: it was a game where Death was the only winner.

This was my world: cold, tangled and distorted. -Keira

Who did the council fight?””It split in two and fought itself.””That’s suicide!””No, ordinary behaviour. The efficient half eats the less efficient half and grows stronger. War is just a violent way of doing what half...

The wren goes to’t

Simon hated her for that. Perhaps it was automatic. Her appearance alone made her different from him, and human beings had always feared and hated anyone who was different. Two thousand years of history saw...

Another man’s property or not, Creed could not walk away from this and ignore it. He draped an arm around her and drew her to him so that her cheek rested against his thigh. His...

Saben cómo pensáis, pero no saben cómo sentís.

Hold on!” The ground is so close and I can see the green grass and smell the scent of it mixed with the sulfur. He helps me turn around and I lock my arms around...

My fingers find his. They are warm, pulsing with genetically altered blue blood, powered by mirror matter.

Beyond the queues, the vacancy screens listed jobs in a multitude of languages. Invariably, they were low-paid and short-term dead-ends. Nearby, people in headphones sat at a bank of machines: the blind and the illiterate...

The zoo grounds reeked of desolation, but the silence had an undercurrent, a silvery vibe, like the hush of a concert hall just before the first note.

I don’t understand’, I say,’why they care what I think, as long as I’m acting how they want me to.”You’re acting how they want you to now’, he says,’but what happens when your Abnegation-wired brain...

Should have taken warning it’s justPeople mourningRunning, hiding, lostYou can’t find, find a place to go, so it’sRed skies at nightRed skies at night, whoa oh, oh oh oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh… red skies at night, red...

It was a sad loss, this illusion of importance, a humbling blow.

It was a room full of ghosts, arranged in readiness for days that would never happen.

Oh, I wonder if there’s another way.

Even though we don’t know which companies the NSA has compromised – or by what means – knowing that they could have compromised any of them is enough to make us mistrustful of all of...

There has to be beauty left in the world, Julia,” said Kiyu. “Otherwise we have nothing.

Maybe it’s ALWAYS the end of the world. Maybe you’re alive for a while, and then you realize you’re going to die, and that’s such an insane thing to comprehend, you look around for answers...

I plant a gentle parting kiss on his lips, our strategy is well and truly screwed at this stage anyway. We barely lasted a day.

Ya no hay nada que no tenga importancia.

And that date, too, is far off?”Far off; when it comes, think your end in this world is at hand!”How and what is the end? Look east, west, south and north.”In the north, where you...

Out here we speak Malspeak, a mangle of English and old languages like Spanish, Mandarin, and Russian. Dialects from a time when the land was defined by many borders. Now there’s only one that matters....

He never realized how noisy American silence was until all the gadgets died.

This war ends, then so do the taxpayer-funded contracts, the drumbeats in the media, the nice Combatant faces, and the patriotic cause to lull the civilians and shame the dissenters. The other thing that comes...

Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it’s not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay...

The collective sign of relief heaved on V-J Day ought to have inspired Hollywood to release a flood of “happily ever after” films. But some victors didn’t feel too good about their spoils. They’d seen...

Moreover, people have become accustomed to reading to escape as opposed to reading to think.

Sadie gave her head an exaggerated scratch. ‘Don’t come too close if you know what’s good for you, these nits are on steroids.

You’d be surprised what I can do with a butter knife.