Speculative Fiction
by Alexandra Foulkes Narrated by Bob Eccles The wedding is a fairy tale blur; a whirlwind of cake and camera-flash and an ocean of smiling faces. Everyone wants me today. Everyone wants to hold my hand and tell me how beautiful I am. I’m overwhelmed. I pull you to one side and try to tell [...]
Flash
by Bruce Meyer Aidan Scelestus wished like anything that the hidden dimensions really were places with length, width, and height. Then the stellar laboratory at Atraville College wouldn’t tower so high above him. Then no one would know he didn’t get the dimensional calculus. Then he could keep up with his lab partner, Emma Drommel. [...]
Speculative Fiction
by Milo James Fowler Narrated by Bob Eccles Jimmy was having a little difficulty getting his point across. Sometimes he really hated being seven. "What did you say you saw down there?" His mother stood in the bathroom doorway while the plumber used some kind of small wrench to disconnect the stopper from [...]
Poetry
by Mary Ann Back Restraint is for the weak. Don’t think, when you dip your toes into the rhythmic swells of Amphitrite, I won’t swallow you whole, if it suits me. I am Poseidon and her swells are mine. They rise and fall with her every breath. They suckle my children and soothe the storms [...]
Articles
by Sue Babcock Due to outside commitments, John "JAM" Arthur Miller, the creator and publisher of Liquid Imagination, has stepped away from LI. He has been such an inspiration, and will be sorely missed. However, be assured that LI will continue. Our great editors (Kevin, Chrissy and Brandon) continue to ... well, edit. The narrator [...]
Poetry
The sky is gray – a cold, majestic, sun-shot gray
by Slava Bart “The sky is gray – a cold, majestic, sun-shot gray” – previously published in the April 2011 issue of Cyclamens and Swords. http://www.cyclamensandswords.com/poetry_april_2011_4.php The sky is gray – a cold, majestic, sun-shot gray. The sand sucks in the foam of the waves. The sky is mirrored in the restless water which [...]
Flash
by Damien Krsteski "One more and you're done," the bartender informs me. I nod, then take a large sip from the bottle. Due to the nature of their work, bartenders tend to know certain things about people. Fortunately, the multiversal collapse that would lead me to her is a concept he'd never grasp. See, I [...]
Flash
by George Wilhite They wasted no time resurrecting Hector once more, per his contract. His knowledge of the plague, both from research and then exposure, was invaluable, so money was no object. Hector had wondered what his earliest memories would be the second time around. Now he knew. Two months from embryo to mass of [...]
Flash
by Guy Belleranti "Please, Gap Mouth, don't let me fall." Gap Mouth rotated his 4 eyes to better stare down, his fingerroons curling inward into fist-like balls. Borg's grasp on the plant-life that sprouted from the cliff's underside was slipping. It wouldn't be much longer now. "It's still not too late," Borg pleaded. "You can [...]
Flash
by Guy Belleranti "Larry, you're amazing," said Lola. "You seem to know everything." "Not yet I don't," he said as he swung his car off the highway and onto a small country road. "I've crammed plenty of science, history and language into my brain, but I still need more smarts in mathematics." "I could help [...]
Literary Fiction
by Tess Pfeifle Narrated by Bob Eccles Callie is a cunning girl. It seems as if eloquence was bequeathed to her at birth from her mother, along with a splash of humor from her father. She is always quick to send a thank you note in flawless handwriting. Though our initial taste of adventure [...]
Poetry
by Slava Bart “An Eclipse” – previously published in the Winter 2012 issue of Contrary Magazine, in mid December, with a 90-day exclusive publication rights, after which re-publication is allowed, with Contrary credited as initial publisher (http://contrarymagazine.com/2012/an-eclipse/) The cat had been sleeping in the doghouse. The day was like a cave after a lightning. Birth [...]
Speculative Fiction
by Nathaniel Tower Narrated by Bob Eccles My daughter told me there was a giant squid under her bed. She told me this many times. I always assumed she was just telling me this because we went to Sea World and saw a giant squid and she thought it was scary, so she imagined [...]
Speculative Fiction
by Waite Jorin Narrated by Bob Eccles The crew would be dead in six days. The eleven from CenA3 had spent two decades of their lives on this mission, this ship; it was the first of its kind, a cybernetic bio-engineered vessel called Canaan, and it was dying. The crew biologist had diagnosed Canaan with [...]
Poetry
by WC Roberts From the eyes of angels clipped from pages of morgue newspaper to the pressed-tin ceiling overhead a Rubicon flows the snakes of Æsculapius clots of ink in your hair the shade gone limp in your hands heads of cabbage wrapped in butcher's paper looking back on the Greyhound bus parked outside [...]
Speculative Fiction
by Sylvia Heartz Narrated by Bob Eccles Sometimes I'm Salbion, waiting in the stilthouse above the ocean surface. Roller-coaster rails descend into the deep. My golden hair is a mane of spikes over my head and my eyes are like crystals. Sometimes I'm lovely Illa, sitting next to Salbion with my skinny knees tucked into [...]
Poetry
by Jeff Jeppesen Jesus was the best of us but he’s been and gone. When he was a boy, the sky darkened and Jesus’s Daddy thundered from the storm clouds, “Who chopped down my cherry tree where dwelt my son, your half-brother, Serpent?” And Jesus was sorely troubled. “I am unable to lie, Dad,” He [...]
Poetry
by KC Wilder cracking through apartment walls giant roaches three feet tall in my bathtub sometimes crawl the most repulsive insects in the world i’m fairly sure mordred can you hep me can you hep me can you hep meister mordred i implore be my toxic stevedore mordred herks & jerks around his [...]
Literary Fiction
by Megan Gregor Narrated by Bob Eccles Carrying a single bag, the young man travels alone with no particular destination in mind. It’s trips like these that got him hospitalized. Apparently, it isn’t acceptable to take off on foot, with one bag, spontaneously. But that’s the problem with being impulsive. You can’t really plan ahead. [...]
Flash
by Devin Miller You are dying again. This time it’s your heart—a massive blockage that sucker-punched your left ventricle, and for the first time in sixty years doctors are telling you that your blood pressure is too low. A machine beside your bed does the work of your kidneys. Every so often you feel like [...]
Speculative Fiction
by Steve Lowe Narrated by Bob Eccles Mickey Pringles donned the lipstick war paint of the night women and struck out onto the street. Wobbly high-heeled and awkwardly C-cupped, he stumbled through the dark. He gripped his homemade cardboard rifle in his hands and called up to the night, his breath a plume above [...]
Speculative Fiction
by L. Lambert Lawson Narrated by Bob Eccles You don't scrape jumpers off the sidewalk and keep a tender heart. You just don't. Half the time, I wish they'd jump with notes pinned to their shirts because there's a tentative truce between the paranorms and the humans. One new murder blamed on either side would [...]
Speculative Fiction
By Paul Malone Narrated by Bob Eccles Heaven is closer now, or so it feels walking The Gap like a bird on a wire, blue sky all around. The Soonday-Yulbrea sporeline that spans The Gap is serpentine smooth, dewy, a rounded chord, all silvery green. It fits perfectly between the balls of Taye’s feet. She [...]