T Minus: 051 Days 21 Hours 03 Minutes 43 Seconds That was odd. The door was already open. Dr. Amarta Zabora removed the key to her office and pushed the door with her […]
Tag: thriller
(Fiction) The Bleeder
The bus pulled onto the shoulder to report the bleeder on the side of the highway. At some point, a car had clipped the man’s leg, which was bent awkwardly to one side. His hands […]
(Fiction) The da Vinci Project
—nothing if not ambitious. Like its namesake, it sought to answer some of the biggest and most persistent questions in science—particularly, how much of who we are is determined by our genes and how much […]
(Fiction) Signs
An alarm blared in short, piercing tones. Nio sat stirring the lukewarm coffee and peering out the windows of the dim office for the stout Agent Quinn, who was no doubt rushing to her location. […]
(Fiction) Bargains
The charges included assault of a minor (firing a gun at 17-year-old Guillermo Aquino); arson (of the house at 421 Asher St.); fraud (profiting under pretenses, namely, that Nio was a false expert); practicing medicine […]
(Fiction) Ruptures
Nio awoke in a box amid a tangle of limbs. Wide-eyed, she screamed and kicked and pushed them away—only to feel silk-smooth synthetic skin. A hairless sex doll stared serenely in the dark, inches from […]
(Fiction) Blackout!
When I wrote Episode Four of THE MINUS FACTION back in 2015, I wondered whether a breakdown in the normal order, like a blackout, would create suspense — whether readers, who seem to live most […]
(Fiction) Just don’t let your mom find it
04Oct 14:37 I sat in the car on the side of the road for a good fifteen or twenty minutes. The Cormacks’ teenage daughter was flirting loudly with a neighborhood boy on the leaf-covered front […]
(Fiction) Cleaning Agent Blues
Nio adjusted the heavy bag on her shoulder as she paced around the bus stop, stepping carefully over an icy sidewalk pockmarked in frozen footprints, like the fossil of a prehistoric riverbed. It was […]
(Fiction) The Shotgun in the Bathroom
01Oct I could tell it was serious by the tone of her voice. Lieutenant Miller called me to her office where Craig Hammond, my old partner, was waiting in one of the chairs. His block […]
