dreamszilla

Fred Skolnik explores the nature of creativity and consciousness as his character tries to write the story of a woman in a dark coat. Image generated with OpenAI Point A is connected to Point B, Point B is connected to Point C. When you run out of letters you go back to the beginning, using subscripts. In this way you can record an infinite number of connections, or "links" as they are called nowadays, though there are in fact only a few trillion. Well, maybe many trillion, but in any case not an infinite number. However, since you are starting a new series every time you reach the letter Z, there is no necessary connection between parallel terms, that is, A is not necessarily connected to A 1 and A 1 is not necessarily connected to A 2 . On the other hand, as each point may have numerous connections, A may very well be connected to B 1 and/or C 2 , and so on and so forth. These connections are being created every second of every minute of every hour of the day...

Lela's ex Zack left his Colt .25 Automatic in her underwear drawer, and now she associates it strongly with him; by JJ Courtney. Image generated with OpenAI Lela hadn't held a gun for the first twenty-one years of her life. That was despite the fact at age twenty, she technically owned one. Ok, it wasn't hers officially, but how else do you describe something that lives in your underwear draw? When she'd pointed out that her technical ownership didn't correspond with any official paperwork (or even a license), Zack had laughed. "The cops are hardly gonna raid your house any time soon, are they?" he'd told her. "Besides, it's registered to me. You can just say I left it here one time." And he was right; no one ever found out about its existence, the police didn't randomly come knocking, and it did make her feel safer in the wake of a spate of break-ins only a block away - especially in summer months when her windows ...

via American Short Fiction https://ift.tt/XQVtEsm

Two ageing South African sisters go on holiday to Kenya, and find out surprising new things about each other; by Ginny Swart. Image generated with OpenAI "You have my list? And you'll arrange for them to be collected from my house once we've left? I'll leave the key with my neighbour. Thank you, Mr de Waal." Libby Phillips put down the phone just in time. "Who was that, dear, the travel agent again?" Her younger sister Ann walked slowly into the room, still slightly hunched after her operation. She sank into an armchair with a smile. "Sit up straight, Annie, you know what the doctor said," said Libby briskly, ignoring her query. "You need to get your muscle tone back again." "Bossy boots. Just wait a few weeks, I'll be a new woman!" After that dreadful conversation with Dr Van Zyl, Libby had good reason to doubt this, but she smiled agreement. "I know you will. Probably won't be able to...

Steve Biersdorf's Floridian character laments the inevitability of ageing. Image generated with OpenAI Two car salespeople with squinty, weathered gazes, outside the showroom smoking. Coming across the lot, an elderly couple slowly approaches, the man employing a walker. "Great," one of the salespeople says, "grippers." "Why do you call them grippers, Lord Sidious?" the other salesperson asks. "Observe, my young apprentice, how he holds onto that walker for dear life." I have the odd fantasy about having once been renowned, even legendary in some circles, left to rot in a nursing home, a woolgathering smile for the fawning admirer who had to meet me before it's too late. The setting for these fantasies is a bleary gestalt of the piss-pungent shithole from where Dad was born into eternity, Parkview Gardens, and the cedar-stenchy bovine outpost where Perry's Mom stays, Autumn Woods. Technically or officially, Per...

via American Short Fiction https://ift.tt/iOksmjq

In Huron County, early 1910s, eight-year-old Ruth navigates the freedoms and perils of farm life; by John RC Potter. Image generated with OpenAI It was a Saturday morning in late spring in Tuckersmith Township. The air was moist and fresh with the promise of a renewed world. It seemed to Ruth that God had taken a paintbrush and with two broad strokes - one of deep green, the other of cool blue - had created the earth and the sky. To Ruth, it was a world that seemed without end. The dirt lane ran in a straight line between the house and the barn, disappearing on the horizon where it met up with the side road, that led to the highway to the south. At that junction, the highway to the west meandered until finally reaching the village of Bayfield, on the shores of Lake Huron, whilst to the east, and much closer at hand, was the hamlet of Brucefield. Ruth was most familiar with Brucefield because she was sometimes fortunate enough to go there with her parents when they went to t...