TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Darkness by J. Richard Jacobs
2. Uncurable by Matthew Hance
3. Dialing the Future by Marilyn Peake
4. Experiencing Technical Difficulty by J. Richard Jacobs
5. Don’t Blame Me by John Klawitter
6. Testimony by Kim McDougall
7. Alien Road Kill "Deal Breaker" by Steve A. Zuckerman
8. Doreen and the Spacemanby John Klawitter
9. Hybernaculum by Kim Mcdougall
10. Soup by J. Richard Jacobs
11. You are History by Vivian Unger
12. The Day the Music Stopped by Ann Dulhanty
13. Gratitude by Todd R. Snow
14. God gets an MBA by Ann Dulhanty
15. A Time to Die by Todd R. Snow
16. The Sadness is in the Lookingby J. Richard Jacobs
1. Darkness
We’ve all heard the adage, "It’s best not to let the genie out of the bottle before you know what it wants," right? We’ve been cautioned that setting the jinn free before its true character is known is courting disaster. We, at least most of us, have been cautioned that genies come in different flavors and that most of them turn out to be bitter. Let’s test the saying, shall we?
Derek and I were seated on the stone retaining wall that keeps the teeth of a gluttonous high tide surf from eating away the street behind us. We were enjoying a bag of greasy, deep-fried Big Beef and Bean Burrito Balls from the Super-Speedy a couple of blocks south. The day was warm, the sun a blazing globe above us and the tide was out.
He stopped in mid-munch, mumbled something incoherent through his mouthful of crunchy Burrito Ball, and pointed out to the surf line. A muddy-green bottle lay on the wet sand.
Before I could say anything, he raced across the narrow strand. In a flash he grabbed it and was coming back on a dead run, waving it over his head like some sort of trophy. A few yards from our spot on the wall he gripped the cork in his teeth.
"Don’t open the-"
!POINK!
Too late.
A dark, dirty-brown gas oozed from the bottle.
"Honey, never set the genie free before you know its true intentions," Mom always said.
I haven’t seen Derek since the darkness descended upon us and it’s getting unbearably cold.





 
 
 
 
 
 















