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

As much as he’d been dreading it, the first meeting between Gray and his new handler passed without any serious confrontation. She was older than his previous handlers, and seemed less in awe of his reputation. He’d gotten used to being the focus of attention and while the change was welcome, it was a bit grating to be discounted so early in the partnership.

They’d gone through the ritual exchange of naming– for a moment he’d wondered if she’d change him from Gray to something less literal, but she paused only a moment before granting him the same call sign he’d carried since he first joined the Corps. It was only symbolic, wolves didn’t use names the way handlers did, but humans had a need to title things, claiming ownership in a way that was foreign, but understandable.

The piles of paperwork that followed the ceremony was less so.

Gray walked into the wolves’ quarters to as warm a welcome as the one he’d faced in the Captain’s office. Of the fifteen wolves assigned to his section, only three acknowledged his presence and he could tell he’d lose two of those by morning. Politics were somewhat muted here, away from the heavy hand of the councils, but he was sure news of his failure was already well on it’s way.

He glanced down at the folder that contained what the Corps thought he’d need to know about his new handler and then tossed it onto his bunk, unread. There was nothing he needed to know, nothing that would make the transition an easier or any less prone to failure. He used to read them, back when he’d thought the key to understanding each other was hidden in the details.

But handlers were handlers, in the end the details didn’t matter.

Star came up behind him and leaned into his back, resting her forehead between his shoulder blades; comforting gestures held over from forms long since abandoned. She was his one constant here, and come morning, the only one he could count on to support what he was doing. He leaned back with a sigh, and tried to believe that maybe what he’d been sent here to do was possible.