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 Record for later: how it feels to long for 

The world was out there, even if it was ending. I could climb down, join in. I could put my feet where other people had put theirs. 

I never wrote back. I was afraid of asking the wrong questions, and afraid of what she would say. Better to sit here in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by library books and curling posters, and daydream about her crimes. From my small window, I could see her old house, boarded up and sinking into the ground. Her parents split up a few years after she ran away for the third and final time, and then they both disappeared. Her family was one of the few to escape our town… 

Cousin Lurch

The incandescent goo seemed to be taking over—conquering? Was this a conquest? It was a most disturbing spectacle; no one at the bar had seen anything like it before. Her skin, bones, organs—even her fingernails—became all quivery and faint. The affected areas retained their forms, but we could see right through them.

Her eyes were the last to go. Were they already so close to jelly that whatever disease or god responsible for her transformation saved them for the end, hoping for an easy finale?

When the change was complete, the light shining in and through Wendy sputtered out and she collapsed into a quivering puddle. One of the Regulars began to hum the theme song from The Blob. David sighed and asked the bartender for a takeout container. The bartender had never heard of such a thing. 

Great works edited by Melva Moran (1988-2011)

A partial bibliography:

- Those which from a distance resemble flies: an encyclopedia of music video tropes, 1990-98. Dansbury: University of Dansbury, 2006. 

Pioneers

Try as she might, Sonya doesn’t remember Earth. She was a baby when her family left for Umilenie, and a young adult by the time they arrived. She learned to walk, speak, and read in a spaceship.

Sonya wanted to learn about the world they’d left behind, but her parents were not helpful in this regard. “Oh man, such a shit-orb,” groaned her mother. “So much death. Sone, that planet was fucked. Filled to the brim with diseases, guns, rapists… hicks everywhere, and terrible weather.” No, she’d rather not talk about it; even thinking about it was unbearable…