I align the crystal mirrors: laser precision. The bearings are set: four dimensions.  A century reverses in a swirl. I stand on a storm-swept hillside. A croft crouches under ragged skies. My footsteps pad on cracked, moss-covered flagstones. I lift the latch: bob under damp eaves.  Warm peat embers glow…

“Goodness,” Rachel said watching his fingers work the dirt. She stared at the wriggling digits as they pawed, clawed, pushed and prodded through the rich topsoil of the family cemetery. “It’s been years since I’ve seen you this energetic. Thank you, Grandpa.” She touched the headstone with her fingertips. “Hard…

The bees were uneasy. Another failed hunt, an empty-handed return to their hives. Something in their programming still let them feel something close to apprehension. Disappointment. The Apiary was only a shadow of what it used to be.  The Beekeeper sprayed a fine mist of LAMS-34 into each hive as…

Thank you for registering your interest in Sunday’s march. We can’t do it without your support and we sincerely hope to see you there. It’s important that as many protesters as possible show up, to demonstrate the depth of anti-time travel feeling. The route of the march as indicated on…

The three volunteers who wrap the holds at the library became obsolete, but they wouldn’t leave. With the advent of the new receipt printers, which had the capability to print sticky labels the librarians could just smack onto the materials patrons had put on reserve, the need for Wrappers—for “Rubber-Banders,”…

Come Desdemona: I have but an hourOf love, of worldly matters and direction,To spend with thee. We must obey the time.  Her new husband speaks his lines. The liquid vowels melt into dark water. He moves towards her, his red and gold uniform, in the chiaroscuro, exuding the mellow warmth…

The minotaur told the mermaid he loved her, but their liaison lasted only so long, and when some years later the gods took note of the fruits of that tryst they did not fume or row but only wept for the wretched pink creature who would know no home on…

a possibly true story At 6 o’clock,  Henrietta watches Mr Pickering, Cecilia Payne, Williamina Fleming and the other computers go home. She promised to lock up, she usually does what she is told. The sun is dropping below the horizon, tinting the sky and the red-brick building next to the observatory.…

Tyn wakes to fireflies playing in the soft areas between the bones making up his spine. To his wife, Abigail, tracing swollen pathways of whippings that echo an anger he keeps holed up in the dark parts of his mind. The part can’t nobody reach but him. Instead, Tyn sets…

They won’t let me sleep. My father, a halo of insects around his head, is singing of Robbie Burns’ heart that’s apparently ‘in the highlands a-following a deer’, in Russian first, then in English. Drink always made him jolly, and it earned him our neighbours’ respect (before they met him…