D.S.T.

Our test of CesiumApp (Sync Your Devices to The Nanosecond!) launched at 2am, the end of Daylight Savings Time.

But somehow when the clocks fell back, so did we, snapped to wherever we’d been one hour before. We showed up again in the conference room, greedy with foreknowledge. Kyler sold airline stocks short, profiting from a plane explosion. I bet Australian rugby winners.

We waited anxiously for next 2am when an explosion blew the doors open. A hideous half-human encrusted with growths like lichen gasped “butterflies” in a familiar croak, leveling a rusted revolver.

I’d always been handy with guns.

From Guest Contributor Clay Waters

Art, Music, Philosophy

Our 5-year-old daughter, Celeste, was singing to herself. She suddenly stopped and said, "Why do I always fart when I sing?” Then a French farmer while plowing on a hill uncovered a rusted revolver that may be the very one Van Gogh used to shoot himself. I looked at my wife, who was looking back at me. I can’t keep drowning, I can’t. There are little children living without parents in freezing tents in detention camps. The ancient Greek stoics maintain a complicit silence. I just want it to end. Every kind of music is meant to be played loudly.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

The Letter Opener

As the minutes stretched on, Selena wondered how long she would be abandoned in the dark. She could hear distant shouting and decided to look for a means of escape.

Throwing herself against the door convinced her she'd never be able to barge her way free and instead she began searching through the contents of the closest. Richard had kept a revolver in an old shoebox, but she had gone for that immediately and it was no longer there.

Other than the books and files, there was little that could prove useful. Until she found the letter opener.Part Eleven

Crescendo

The mysterious caller asked to meet in the church tower. Grace suspected a trap, but planned a surprise of her own. She glanced down the stairwell trying to discern the source of echoing footsteps.

Professor Tobin had warned her the information in her possession was dangerous. He offered to take it off her hands, but her dying lover had entrusted the package to Grace alone.

She raced into the belfry, hiding in the shadows.

The trapdoor opened, and Dr. Tobin stepped into the light. A shot rang out. Grace slipped the revolver into her pocket and calmly descended the ladder.

Genre: Hitchcock