Titania’s Purse, Chapter 3, by Bruce Davis

This is Chapter 3 (and conclusion) of the story Titania’s Purse.

You can read Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here

I’d promised Marie that I’d never try to see her or find the child. We knew there was no way they’d let her keep it. A Spud raising a Normie child would open too many uncomfortable questions. Besides, at seventeen and legally disabled, she had no say in what happened to the baby. Her family had handled the whole thing. Quietly, respectably, but above all secretly. (more…)

Titania’s Purse, Chapter 2, by Bruce Davis

This is Chapter 2 of the story Titania’s Purse.

You can read Chapter 1 here and Chapter 3 here

Lunch was at an out of the way diner. Not the Taproom at the Drake, but I didn’t care. The burger was good and they used real grease for the fries, not that canola crap mandated by the Health Department. I made a note of the place for attention later. (more…)

Benthic Rhapsody

Sometimes during the sleep cycle, I turn up the volume on my hydrophones and shut down my exterior lights. Phosphorescent plankton dance up and down the thermocline, ghostly wisps of blue green light that form a backdrop for the darting flashes of the angler fish and dragon eels hunting prey along the edge of the abyssal cliffs. (more…)

Titania’s Purse, Chapter 1, by Bruce Davis

This is Chapter 1 of the story Titania’s Purse.

You can read Chapter 2 here and Chapter 3 here

The morning bell jarred me out of a dream about clean sheets and hot meals. I rolled out of the bunk and slid bare feet into the plastic slippers that they gave us to wear as shoes. Clancy walked through the dorm, swinging her wooden spoon. It had a leather thong looped through a hole in the handle and she swung it from her fingertip as she looked for stragglers. (more…)

No User Manual, by Bruce Davis

It was my birthday and so I decided to kill myself one more time. Maybe this time I’d get lucky.
I visited Jenny’s grave first. I knelt and brushed away the leaves and dead grass that had accumulated around the base of the stone and traced the carved outline of her name with my fingertip. She’d been one of the last to die, really die, before the Cure, nine years ago on this same day. God, I missed her. (more…)