Thaddeus Howze's Blog, page 9
July 6, 2013
Black Ribbon
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone. — Bill Withers The highway stretches out in front of me, a black ribbon winding into the future; a collapsing probability of possibility connecting me with the past and through it to the future. Music streams from my radio, a carrier wave connecting me with myself in the futures […]
July 3, 2013
Unnatural Gas
An industrialist puts on his mask, his plastic face, his expensive suit and brings an indentured lawyer out into town with him. He stops at a rally and in a rather unconvincing fashion reminds the people, about how much good fracking has done for their town. One of the bystanders pulls out a gun and […]
July 1, 2013
Keeping the Peace
We hadn’t seen a living human in decades. We continued to cruise the battlefields where we sought out our enemies. Still-moving but barely-living flesh. Once, they were inmates, prisoners of the Last Civilization. That is what we called them. We hadn’t seen anyone living for nearly a century. The penal armies were recruited when viral […]
June 30, 2013
The Busiest Little Death House in Texas
“Warden, we’re ready.” “By the authority adjudicated to me by the State of Texas, you gentlemen have been declared dead, executed by the Penrose Penitentiary of Harlan County.” A doctor walks into the room where the men lay out on the tables, strapped down and ready for their injections. There are six men being treated […]
June 27, 2013
I Remember the Future on a Faraway Land
Esme ran away from the Colony and on the edge of a cliff, as the dairy-blue sea broke against the jagged golden rocks, she found a new god. Unlike the other gods of Home, this one had no name. It was native to the new world, worshipless, alone. Esme knew it for a god right […]
June 22, 2013
Rhapsody
a tale of the Twilight Continuum Humans think they love music. They will tell you about which musicians transformed the world with music, or how a particular music emphasizes one spiritual aspect or another. If Human religion was to be any baseline, no religion had ever transformed us like music did our hosts, the Corvans. […]
June 21, 2013
Road Trip
“Hey buddy.” Standing by the used car lot in my rundown neighborhood only made me anxious since a string of murders had been taking place right on this corner in the last week. I was scared to turn around thinking I was about to become the next victim. I worked the night shift as a […]
June 17, 2013
Through the Reeds
Deep where the fish don’t breathe, Dorian had a silent listener. The boy went down to the lake with Doorknob, his Chihuahua. He stood by the water and hit reeds with a stick and told them to speed up production. Like dad, Dorian had employees. The lake drank Dorian’s vocables. It listened to the sound […]
June 16, 2013
Fall of the Caretakers
The bus hurtled toward him. Victor ‘Ace’ Jackson wrenched himself out the huge projectile’s path. The bus speared into a five-story apartment building, punching a massive hole through brick and glass. A ruptured tank hemorrhaged gas and a colossal fuel-fed eruption swallowed the bus, magnifying the size of that hole. An incendiary carpet unfurled upward, […]
June 12, 2013
The Creator
He’d been dead two years now. I can still remember him from that Christmas two years ago, sitting in his checkered cardigan with his furrowed brow focused on a car from his underground diorama. He hand painted every part of his tiny town; each part of it resembling our city of Hamburg, its mixture of […]
