Dime Novels From Oblivion

An icy autumn rain turned the barbed wire covered enclave of dirt into a muddy gash. The ground oozed as if the earth itself was bleeding beneath the boots of the soldiers living in the sprawling mass grave. On the edge of winter, the days were short, and the sun had already fallen over the front. A shroud of dust and smoke smothered the light of the stars. There were only the glowing red ends of the cigarettes the soldiers clutched in their trembling hands.
Victoria or "Vicky" was a short-haired terrier with pointed ears and rings of brown fur around her eyes she wore like a mask. Vicky was walking along the sodden trench with her nose to the mud. Her flopping ears stiffed, and she suddenly stopped.
"I think Vicky sees something," said a young soldier in tattered khakis, his quivering hand struggling to bring a cigarette to his lips.
The sensory overcharge of war quickly rattled the minds of men, but Vicky stayed sharp. Nothing, not the distant thundering of artil…

Lingering awareness of our own mortality is probably the most punishing consequence of self-awareness. Death is a downer; it’s in the background of our entire lives. It stirs in us melancholy thoughts during our fleeting moments of joy, and it causes sleepless nights, it renders any action or accomplishment pointless.
Human consciousness has risen to the level of neurotic, but it seems natural humans have an obsession with the end of ourselves and all things. No matter what we tell ourselves, no matter what our endeavors and their outcomes, it was all a foregone conclusion.
This collection of short stories confronts the finality of death, the undoing of all that is. What do you do when the only thing you know every breath, every beat of your heart, and every thought could be your very last?
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In a small wood-paneled study, cramped between heavy bookcases ladened with dusty moth-eaten volumes, lit by the pale grey light from a solitary window was Alexander Golitsyn, the third considered by a dwindling number of people to be an Emporer. Alexander was sitting at a desk barely big enough to accommodate both his diary and porcelain teapot.
"All my efforts to hold onto anything in life has been like trying to clutch water in my hands. Life is over, yet I go on living. There is no reason left for me to be here. I'm just waiting for my last heartbeat and my last breath."
A knock a the study's door brought Alexander's hand to a halt. He didn't know it when he put the pen down, but this melancholy paragraph was to be the last attempt at poetry he'd ever make.
"Yes? What is it!" Alexander huffed with tobacco chared vocal cords.
"I have an urgent message for the sovereign!" an earnest young man answered through the door.
"Fine, you…

It was a bright and mild morning. A few billowing white clouds drifted lazily across the ocean blue sky, the gentle sun reflected off the dew coated grass and flowers, giving the world a shimmer. A human stream filled the streets and sidewalks as the city rose to life.
One lonely widower had a different reaction to the beautifully emerging day.
Hibiki closed the shutters on his windows, locked the door, and sat his tired old body into a reclining chair in front of a blaring television. To Hibiki, the day’s crystal sky was a dark omen and a visceral reminder of that horrific moment all those decades ago when a flash of light took away 100,000 people.
Hibiki had been there when it happened. He was a doctor at the time, and while the bomb canceled the workday for most everyone else for people in Hibiki’s line of work, there was an additional layer of hell to endure.
“Please...Please..help my daughter!” Hibiki could hear a woman pleading from the street below. With a trembling hand, he pi…

The river was like a massive indigo snake coiling in the shadow of the canyons its eternal flow cut out of the very earth. Somewhere along the watery corridor, settled human life grew out of the muddy banks. The tribe sustained itself on the arterial river, steadily expanding and contracting with the rhythm of its flow like a beating heart.
As far as anyone in the tribe knew no other arrangement had ever existed. The river had birthed them, molding sand and clay into flesh, and infusing the husks with its life-giving waters.
Life under the desert’s smooth turquoise sky seemed safely stagnant. There was no inkling, no deciphered omens, absolutely no hunch of the approaching cataclysm lurking just out of sight obscured by the landscape’s jagged ridges.
Not far from the isolated patchwork of green and brown earth settled by this tribe, the scion of ancient god well into his twilight years was on the cusp of fulfilling his divine purpose.
Harmakar was sitting in the dust staring into the …

When Jack arrived at the nursing home with his family, the director quickly and quietly took him aside and explained to him today's visit might be "difficult."
Jack, his wife Anne, and their twin daughters now both 10 followed an orderly through a windowless hallway paved with blue carpet that promoted one of the girls to ask if grandma "lives in a hotel?"
Her room was on the far end of the hallway. For Jack, the walk always felt a little bit longer. When they stopped at her door, the growing sense of dread had turned to nausea. Every time he saw her, she seemed further away, and not just mentally. Her thinning hair would be whiter her flesh more shriveled.
Her decaying mind kept her obscured behind a veil of memories. The past was more real to her than the present.
 When the orderly opened the door, Jack saw his mom sitting up in her bed wearing a VR helmet with a rare but pleasant smile on her face.
"I have to warn you she can get pretty mad when we tak…