Tag: Fiction
-
Chapter 10: Worry Not Apricot twisted beneath her blankets. Midnight lay quiet, but whispers moved through the plaster, soft and damp, running along the walls in time with the red blink of her alarm. Something else breathed in the room.…
-
Chapter 9: Trial By Fire Apricot pushed through the automatic doors and the store’s noise shut off behind her. The parking lot lay mostly empty, a few cars scattered among oil puddles holding the neon from across the street. Cold…
-
Chapter 8: Midnight Blues A single streetlamp hung overhead, its filament spitting weak yellow light. Beneath it, something shuddered. It was almost a man, but the form sagged and quivered as though struggling to remember the shape it should hold.…
-
Chapter 7: Collateral The corridor ended at a doorway hanging crooked on half-shorn hinges. The gunman nudged her through. The bank’s grand lobby had been gutted. Plaster dust drifted down through the beat of the orange alarm light. Cracks ran…
-
Chapter 6: Hello The explosion reached her as sound and then as force. The tunnel bucked, and grit came down into Apricot’s hair. The lights flared twice and died. Darkness took everything except thin ribbons of daylight leaking through the…
-
Chapter 5: Dirty Tricks Apricot pressed on, her breath cutting short as she broke into a jog. The outline of the Okabe Central Bank emerged ahead, more bunker than building. Its concrete bulk squatted under the floodlights, armored in steel…
-
Chapter 4: On the Radio The afternoon light slanted through the towers of Blue Ash City, laying gold between steel and glass. Traffic and pedestrian chatter surrounded the open-air tables of Bingo Burgers, where the smell of grease, pepper, and…
-
Chapter 3: Afternoon Blue Ash City moved at its usual weekday rhythm. Footsteps crossed the pavement, vendors called over the thrum of traffic, and neon signs glowed stubbornly against the hard midday sun. Apricot moved with the current down Iwai…
-
Chapter 2: Morning Red light pulsed behind Apricot Signa’s eyelids, warm and steady with her heartbeat. She drifted inside it. Safe. Buzz… buzz… The sound pulled her loose. Her eyelids parted, vision swimming in a soft wash of color. The…
-
Chapter 1: Blood On The Streets Night pooled in New Ash City like spilled ink. Arikado moved through it the way a man moved through a dream he didn’t trust, slow, precise, senses on thin wire. Sirens painted the wet…
