Barbaroossa

The streamlined automobile flew through the thick tangle of trees that swamped the old cobblestone road as I bore the wheel towards the old orchard. As the clearing developed, I drove unto the generous property, the headlights illuminating the fog that rolled along the next gravel road, issuing forth from the black steel gates that guarded the old household. It was by chance that I had come upon this once prosperous piece of land; an old acquaintance by the name of Jeffrey Gould had, fortuitously, inherited several of his forebears’ properties in just a few short weeks. These timely demises, however, had raised speculation as to whether

The cold wind kissed my pinched cheeks as I dared to stand against it on the top of the cliff. My eyes squinted, looking over the turbulent sea that crashed against the shore, sent from some unseen force across the horizon. I bunched my shoulders and folded my arms, trying to keep the freezing weather from defeating me. My mother had taken me to the cliff often, when I was a child. Whenever life became too much to bear on just one pair of shoulders, mum and I would set off up the winding road, climbing ever forward towards the cliff. When we got here, we would sit, for hours, and say nothing. We’d just watch the sky shift overhead, watc

The old rocking chair creaked as the elderly man leaned back and forward; a decaying frame frame in perpetual motion. The creaking was the only thing he heard; all else was silent. His skin felt weathered and dry, like leather that had been sanded down. His fingertips traced the lines along his face, somewhat soothed by the roughness of his stubble. He had spent his life wishing that time would relent from the rapid speed at which he had travelled through it, although now every spent breath was drawn out for what seemed an eternity. His impatience had soon faded, as time was a war of attrition, and had taken its toll on him, until it seemed a

Deployment is unavoidable. Not today. Since the population of Earth expanded across its surface, its atmosphere, and its oceans, it was inevitable that we were to spread to the outer reaches of space. Like cancer. I was born in the year 2220 A.D, to criminals of parents who produced an insane three children. For this, they were executed, their flesh recycled, and their children dispersed. I was the last of them, the bastard third, so I was sent off-world. I suppose it wasn’t just those like me. Because overpopulation is too immense, even with the Progeny Restrictions Act, those who exceed the set population of the oceanic and atmospheri

Every fibre of my being was focused on maintaining my footing. My vision was distorted, like the dissipating fragments of a dream; a grasp on sand slipping through fingers. The footpath seemed a victim of continental drift, the plates beneath it causing miniscule fissures on the surface. The sun had made its journey through the sky sixteen times since I left the last collection of fallout shelters, and on the twelfth night, I knew I would never see home again. My heart leapt into my throat as my shoe caught on a pothole, sending a hot, searing pain up my toe. The left knee landed first, jarring suddenly as I collapsed on the asphalt. I reach

The darkened embers fell from the sky, floating across the face of the dying sun. Dry air blasted my face with dust and ash, making it more difficult to traverse the decaying structures of what was once a city. The fragile remnants of buildings all leant inward toward me as I made my way through the path they had created. Sounds echoed off in the distance, the crash of concrete crumbling away from its frame, the reverberation of metal against bitumen as the ferocious winds disturbed its resting place, the dull hum of an incoming storm. But the air was devoid of the sounds of life; machine, plant, or animal. The Earth around me was failing. I