Normal people got to play Monday morning quarterback and gripe about 20/20 hindsight, they got to say things like ‘it was totally unexpected’ or ‘no one could have seen that coming,’ and worst of all, they got to stand in the cold early-morning rain, watching steam rise from the twisted metal and finding comfort in shared ignorance.

Cee, on the other hand, was just as cold and just as wet, but didn’t have the same luxury. She’d seen Dean’s death in all it’s minute variations, but the visions had come too late for her to do anything but direct the ambulance where to go. The future was malleable and fluid–she saw probabilities, not certainties, but they had always been enough before. Instead of visions that layered themselves one upon another another until a common future shown through, she found herself skipping from one possibility to another without any hint which way things would unwind.

This was the third murder she’d seen too late and she didn’t have to look to know it would be her last.

These snippits are copyright Martha McMahon Bechtel and may not be reproduced or distributed without express permission. All rights reserved.

Technotari Tags: Fiction, Urban Fantasy

One morning Henry awoke to find a particularly odd message scrawled on his ceiling in lipstick.

“Dear Henry,” it began, “congratulations! You have found a way to travel between parallel universes… If you find a way to stop, please let the rest of us know.”

“Signed, the Henry who puts his keys in the right front pocket, the Henry who chose the red overcoat instead of the rust orange, and the Henry who did not marry Anne.”

“Oh.” Said the Henry who put his keys on the table by the door, had done with the nice gray cloak, and had also very definitely not married Anne.

Suddenly the past few weeks made much more sense…

These snippits are copyright Martha McMahon Bechtel and may not be reproduced or distributed without express permission. All rights reserved.

Technotari Tags: Fiction, Fantasy

He isn’t sure if this is an end or a beginning. There’s a silence to the whole event, as if the last moments of his life were destined to be played out in mime. He wants to tell them to talk, cry, laugh, something to fill in the static silence that roars in his ears. But they can’t hear him, or he can’t speak— he can’t tell if he ever stopped screaming.

It was never meant to last this long. Not the war, not the bond, not any of the bloody chaos his life has— had become. So it’s a relief, almost, to stumble to an end.

Only this isn’t death, not quite— he’ll be alive, only separated back into his component selves. And that’s a sort of death, although not in a way anyone who hasn’t been part of a bond can understand. To go from I to we… he closes his eyes, feeling a sluggish lag between the people he won’t be anymore.

With a final shiver, he falls apart.

These snippits are copyright Martha McMahon Bechtel and may not be reproduced or distributed without express permission. All rights reserved.

Technotari Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction

This is a rough of something, I think… *pokes story*

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“They found her in a room tied to a chair watching this whole bank of tvs; sports channels, pay per view matches, everything and anything you can bet on.” The officer shook his head as he led them through the hallways. “She had a stack of paper on this desk in front of her and there was this godawful tape repeating ‘Who will win?’ over and over… damned creepiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“And they seriously thought she could tell them?” The detective was two seconds from turning around, going back to the real work waiting for him.

“Didn’t think,” the cop finally stopped by one of the doors, “knew.”

~*~*~*~*~
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There is sound and there is noise and this hovers at the brink, their voices still a distinct thunder, not yet the overwhelming flood of full migration. By midmorning she’ll need her headset, earplugs, earmuffs, and other layered defenses against her prey, but for now she can just watch them pass unprotected.

There are few worlds that allow the luxury of size, most life is more akin to mice than elephants, but on the world they haven’t gotten around to naming, life started with elephant and worked up.

Only the outliers of the herd are up and moving with the sun, the core is still asleep, blanketing the grasslands in a patchwork of black and tan hide. It still takes her a bit each time she sees them to wrap her mind around the fact that the herd literally goes on to the horizon. They’ll strip the ground bare by the time the last of them passes, but less than a day after that everything is green again. No ecosystem should be able to support such overabundance, even temporarily, and the cycle of feast and famine seems too delicately balanced for her comfort. But this is Big World and they’ve just started digging into all it’s quirks and biological oddities.

These snippits are copyright Martha McMahon Bechtel and may not be reproduced or distributed without express permission. All rights reserved.

Technotari Tags: Fiction, Fantasy