majoki

Joined August 2025

258 stories

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Stories (258)

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beneath the box elder
In the dappled sunlight she felt the late afternoon breeze turn the tide against the day’s heat. So pleasant, so perfect, like so many hundreds of summer evenings before in her back garden. She brimmed, feeling the privilege of contentment. But how to say it?
By majoki18 days ago in Fiction
Muscling In
“We eat life, not sunshine.” Shielding his dark eyes from the desert brightness, Sitanni surveyed the acres and acres of solar panels filling the valley floor and waited for Jub to respond to his provocation. It didn’t come. Jub stood silent soaking in the sunshine, thin and welcome in mid-winter.
By majoki18 days ago in Fiction
On My Mind
You know that feeling you get when you’re halfway to work and you realize that you can’t remember the last fifteen minutes of your drive. You know you’ve been gripping the wheel staring out the windshield, but you aren’t really there. Some part of your subconscious was driving, a deep reptilian part of the brain. Thank god for that cold bloodedness. We mammals are too fuzzy, too distractible, much like my cat.
By majoki18 days ago in Fiction
The Determined Instrumentalist
The dog’s tail wagged. Or so it had seemed. Lhalam wasn’t so sure now. She held back the sim-treat. The dog nuzzled her sandal.
By majoki18 days ago in Fiction
Color Blindsided
When Misty smiled that big smile of hers I could see the cancer so much more clearly. It was hard not to say anything. I mean what do you tell the thirty-something supermarket cashier you see a few times a month and only know her name because it’s pinned to her blouse? “Hey, thanks for giving me the store discount on my Cool Ranch Doritos, even though I don’t have a coupon. And by the way, Misty, you should really get a blood test soon because you’ve got a serious case of lymphoma.”
By majoki18 days ago in Fiction
slapdash
Of course there were doubters. Of course they said it couldn’t be done. But, of course, that’s how it has always been done. Blowing across the Pacific on log rafts. Clawing up Everest in tweed jackets with brittle hemp ropes. Blasting to the moon in a tin can built with slide rules.
By majoki18 days ago in Fiction
a something new
Not long after a distant star suddenly brightened a thousand-fold and gamma rays gobsmacked life on earth, a prairie dog emerged from its burrow in a deep narrow canyon in what was once southern Utah.
By majoki19 days ago in Fiction
The Good, the Bad, and the Zombie
The Good was the worst. The Bad was worthless. The Zombie, at least, was willing. Life is so energy intensive. Though the Zombie held few thoughts in its putrefying head, this one stuck as flies buzzed feverishly around, attracted by the kill on the street. The Good had done it. Savagely struck down the child and then walked on fingering his rosary beads as if he’d just blessed the poor little soul.
By majoki19 days ago in Fiction
meta
Her eyes were oceans of possibility. Blue and depthless. And I was shipwrecked. A fallen eyelash crushed the sails and within moments my ship foundered in the shoals of the iris. When I climbed, half drowned, upon the pupil, I was looking straight down into her optic nerve.
By majoki19 days ago in Fiction
the gravedigger
The shovel chimed lightly against a larger rock and the gravedigger paused in the hole. Sharp gusts lifted the loosened dirt, whirling it across the high plain into the reddening dawn.
By majoki20 days ago in Fiction
Kessler Run In
Arvidas stared at his radar screen trying to see the clearest path through. But the Kessler Run was Scylla and Charybdis resurrected in space. Unspeakable horror. And no way out without terrible loss.
By majoki20 days ago in Fiction
a step forward
They took a step forward. A warning siren sounded as sentry guns auto-targeted. Red lights flashed threateningly along the top of the border wall as a digital voice commanded, “Stop. Do not enter the barrier zone. The defense guns are programmed to fire at any incursion into the barrier zone.”
By majoki20 days ago in Fiction