Alina Z

Joined February 2022

6 stories

Bio

Alina likes psychological thrillers that happen up there, on the orbit. She lives in South California, loves to read and prefers writing in third limited.

Achievements (1)

Runner-Up in Christopher Paolini's Fantasy Fiction Challenge

Stories (6)

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Waiting for You Is Easy
For our first date, I envision San Marino or Pasadena. You dismiss the lush botanical gardens, laugh at the jet propulsion lab. That old tech chem plant in Encino, you decide, the one converted into a tire recycling compound. I subside. Besides the glimpse of your wide shoulders in white T-shirts, I love your keen eye for industrial minimalism.
By Alina Z3 years ago in Fiction
The Wake
The four veterans arrive last at my grandfather's wake. Grandma sends them to the kitchenette. "They smell like death," she says. As if death isn't already laid out in state on the living room table.
By Alina Z3 years ago in Fiction
The Plights of the Agriculture Integrity Department. Top Story - March 2023.
Bluebell trots between two waves of travelers who roll like caterpillars toward customs check. Our vests are green with black, but she wears a blue one, with Agriculture Integrity Dept stitched in gold. I grab her by the collar. Bluebell is petite, with short hair colored in tranquil shades of chocolat noir and cafe latte, but now she pulls with the force of a small tractor at harvest time. It’s noon, and I haven’t fed her yet. Who’s better at sniffing artisan blood sausage than a trained beagle? A hungry trained beagle.
By Alina Z3 years ago in Fiction
My tank of joy and discontent
Today is difficult. I’ve already spent half a day in the lab, lying on the surgical tray. The spectacled man keeps showing me white scribbles on his thin, black glass wall. I have seen similar signs before. On kids who press their noses and tongues against my aquarium wall. They wear clothes and caps scribbled like that. Tiny pebbles clumped together, aligned in rows that remind me of the sand ripples carved by the undertow in the seabed.
By Alina Z3 years ago in Fiction
Elegy for Eudoxia. Runner-Up in Christopher Paolini's Fantasy Fiction Challenge.
The forest shuddered. At dawn, black starlings gushed from their nests by the thousands. They dashed over Lake Orlén in ample arabesques, twisted and spun. They swooped from the heights, whirled above giant boulders sprayed with tar darker than their wings, then folded in two waves. When the first glint of light fired up the sky, the two-pronged murmuration of starlings plunged into the clear blue waters.
By Alina Z3 years ago in Fiction
Teal is the treason
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. And I can tell you they’re right. I don’t hear one decibel from Jenzy, not one sigh, after I puncture the left elbow of his space suit with a pencil-sized laser. He sways slowly left and right, and with his luminescent helmet, all tangled in cables, poor Jenzy looks like one of those long-horned summer stag beetles, struggling for footing when turned on their back. He stops trembling in a few seconds but I know he isn’t dead yet, he wouldn't be until all his body fluids boil and hiss their way out of ruptured tissues.
By Alina Z3 years ago in Fiction

Alina Z

Bio

Achievements .css-1svwz57-Text{display:inline-block;color:var(--text-default-mute);}(1)

Stories (6)

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Waiting for You Is Easy

The Wake

The Plights of the Agriculture Integrity Department. Top Story - March 2023.

My tank of joy and discontent

Elegy for Eudoxia. Runner-Up in Christopher Paolini's Fantasy Fiction Challenge.

Teal is the treason

Achievements (1)