Starholder

As Almond Al settles into his chair, the evening breeze weaving through the leaves of the almond trees, he feels the grip of the day slowly loosen. The sun dips below the horizon, a tangerine haze fading into the twilight. His eyelids grow heavy, and as his head nods, the world around him dissolves into…

Almond Al reclined on his porch, a joint in one hand and a hot cup of tea in the other. The sky was a clear expanse, the stars were the artist’s specks of light, scattered across the inky black. But Al’s gaze was fixed on one celestial body, the full moon, an eerie thin orange…

Eternal Al There isn’t a warmth to the day. Al finds this odd, unexpected. There he is on the balcony drinking his evening tea, and the patchy cloud work that’s annoyed them all day is still there. A soggy pockmarked blanket over the sky, a feeling of being trapped in a thin gauze mesh. He…

Aisles and Piles Al went to one knee, opened the cover to the outdoor socket and snapped a key from the magnet backed casing. He heard the fluid and cartilage in his knee snap, crackle, pop as he pulled himself back up. He’d been waiting all afternoon for Ed to make it up to Jimmy’s…

Morning Becomes Eddie Edward Adnan Leghari Ortega stood before the full-length mirror. Buzzed black hair, deep set marble eyes, light brown skin. Tall to the point it might cause trouble at sea, built a little too big to give the impression of intelligence. Ed was more than comfortable in his own skin. He considered himself…

Autonomous Unmanned Vehicle The late October sun slipped through the narrow band of windows reminding the basement lab that they did not live among the depths. Ed Ortega squinted, trying to stay deep within the problem on his screen. The glare was an unnecessary distraction from the physical world. He felt the sunlight on his…