Invasion

Crowds of strangers gather to see an unfamiliar lightning storm. The thunder roars and howls as the storm grows angrier. The ground begins to shake and rumble. Lightning bolts strike near and far.

What was once a quiet town was now invaded by alien-like creatures. So small, yet full of razor sharp teeth. They leap from one victim to the next, craving the taste of human blood. Their bodies growing by the millisecond.

Their nests all around. Cone-shaped and green. Clumped together. Millions of babies hatching. The human race dwindling by the minute.

The invasion has just begun.

From Guest Contributor Alexa Findlay

Alexa is an Undergraduate student at the University of California, Riverside. She spends her time writing fiction and poetry. Her work has been featured in Pomona Valley Review, Better than Starbucks Magazine, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Halcyon Days, Grotesque Magazine, and Blood Moon Rising Magazine amongst others.

Exiled

The road is not straight. It swines and curves. Like a path of destruction. No journey here I called. I couldn’t see ahead. Deviation, pain, loss, pricked at me. They said no left turn, back up, 6 months, maybe less. Who decides, hurray, take a right? No, down that alley, over there. A light, but you can’t escape. It creeps in deceptive, unimaginable, taking everything. There is no humility. It feeds off itself until the end. Then a rapture egresses, no more pain, no more exile from the human race. So many, yet one name. So common - cancer awaits.

From Guest Contributor Dana Sterner

The Plague

No one noticed as the epidemic became incipient. Even as people started dying from the new strain of bacteria, the entire society was oblivious.

I was the only one who could see what was happening and nobody would listen to me.

You might think I'm crazy and when the story ends it will turn out I'm inside the locked cell of an insane asylum. I wish that were the case.

Instead, I'm the last man on Earth.

I did some research after the plague. The most aggressive characteristic of the disease is that it shuts down a person's mind so they are unaware of being sick. I was the only person to have an immunity.

Unfortunately for the bacteria, it evolved too well and now there are no more hosts for it. It's as extinct as the human race will be after my death.

This is no solace for me.

Today's story deviates in that it is exactly 150 words instead of 100. It's something of an epic.