Dime Novels From Oblivion

After the Mormon armies reached the east coast, they set to work salvaging and restarting the long-abandoned foundries scattered across the landscape. The blast furnaces once again were swollen with molten steel, and the towering brick stacks erupted with volcanic ferocity. The forked flames lashed at the clouds and the billowing smoke blackened the sky heralding the ascendancy of the continent's new masters. Roaming bands of scavengers had been picking at the bones of New York City for decades. The nibbling quickly turned into a full feeding frenzy. Legions of landless farmers and rootless laborers descended on the ruins. They worked as ceaselessly as termites to hollow out the steel carcass. John Nelson had traveled a long way to get a look inside the old city. He was a Captain Edler in the Bringham Young regiment an outfit that had spent the better part of a decade fighting across the continent. The spry young Captain was an avid student of history, and even though dead or

Sophia Paulson was a fantastic performer. Her body was sculpted and toned by hours spent with physical trainers, her wardrobe was the latest to grace the pages of the fashion industry’s most recognizable trend setting publications. She adorned her near flawless oval face with thin wire frame glasses that added a subtle complimenting component of intellectualism to her sex appeal. She was a young upstart. She had gone to the best schools, had met the right people, and at the relatively young age of 32 had established herself as a respectable practitioner in the field of psychology. There were tumultuous undercurrents of stress running beneath the well crafted facade however. She had been able to hide them most of her life from just about everyone she knew, everyone except her fiance. Her engagement once a countdown to the day she would finally have the final piece of her perfect life had now become an indefinite and agonizing period. In her attempts to expedite the process she had

This piece won best new poem for the month for June! Check out the other great entries here The pillars of fire ignited the sky, spreading an ebony shroud of death that quickly engulfed the glowing blue and green orb floating in the infinity of space. All over the planet, the bright clusters of lights that had once stood as a testament to the power of man were smothered by darkness. To the men and women watching from their observatory on the edge of the cosmos the lights dotting the surface of the Earth were more than just the burning glow of civilization, the illumination emitted by billions of lives. These lights were a reminder of their homes, of their families, of their lives, and in only a matter of minutes, it was all gone. For the astronauts onboard the international space station, the burning red flurry of atomic explosions was like a silent fireworks show. They were deaf to the Earth shaking roar of the blasts, the howl of the scorching nuclear winds that were carrying the

Private Stuart Breyers had joined the marine corps during peacetime. The plan was to use his two-year hitch as a transition period into becoming an independent young man. Not six weeks after his 19th birthday the boy’s limited term of existence had been significantly curtailed. He had no more years to look forward to only mere moments. He walked in a single file line with his comrades under the darting eyes of their Japanese captors. His fingers were laced behind his head, and he didn’t dare move his hands to shield his eyes from the blinding tropical sun or the salty sting of his sweat. Breyers had spent his life in the vast cornfields of Middle America where the grey skies of winter lingered for months on end. The Pacific sun turned his flesh a pulsing red. The Japanese fleet loomed ominously in the still crystal blue waters. The massive steel barrels of their guns had returned to their resting position. Occasionally a grenade blast in the thick jungle rattled the birds out of t

Atone Timko was the newest division chief in the Administration for Internal Security. The Administration was housed in the People's Revolutionary Headquarters. Which itself was an immense palace the deposed regime had built in the heart of the old capital.  After they shut the gates behind them, the revolutionaries proclaimed a new government for the people. The new stewards of the fortified citadel tore down the banners and flags embroidered with the symbol of the imperial family but kept in place the fortress walls patrolled by a legion of soldiers. Atone's department was in a windowless basement wing of the compound. It was in this sunless labyrinth where Antone and his army of agents and analysts obsessively looked for evidence of any plots against the revolutionary Committee. The self-styled freedom fighters had set a dangerous precedent with their bloody coup. They hoped they could avoid the same fate as the imperial family or, for that matter, the former members of th