Break From Reality. Daily.
This story is by Chris Murphy and was part of our 2020 Summer Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here. Whatever you do, don’t damage it, lose it, or let it run out of power or you’ll be trapped wherever you are until you die. David’s sister had repeated “Gogan’s Temporal…
This story is by Chris Murphy and was part of our 2019 Summer Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here. Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell Full of that yankee doodly dum Half a million boots went sloggin’ through hell And I was the kid with the drum The…
This story is by Chris Murphy and was part of our 2018 Summer Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here. “Ezekiel Daniels, if I have to tell you one more time to stop playing with that thing and take out the trash, I will burn every last one of these tapes…
This story is by Chris Murphy and was part of our 2018 Spring Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here. I’ve been told I need to record recent events in case someone survives this nightmare and wants to know how this nightmare started. Since we’ve been more than a week without…
This story is by Chris Murphy and was part of our 2017 Winter Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here. The explosion occurred at precisely 1:25 am. The hovercraft arrived thirteen seconds later and deposited two figures onto the ruined 23rd floor of the Bisyn Technologies building before ascending into the…
“You still love her. Don’t ya?”
The voice was what I imagined God sounded like if God had been chain smoking unfiltered Camels for a few thousand millennia. I turned from the bus window to see who had broken the most sacred of society’s public transportation protocols and immediately wished I hadn’t. If the ancient face staring back at me belonged to God, he had clearly stopped giving a crap a long time ago.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Any man who says they can survive the Black Hills in January for more’n three weeks is either a liar or a Lakota Sioux. I was neither. One look at my war-torn face told my story. I was a survivor. After two wars and a stint in the U.S. Cavalry, I figured I could survive a South Dakota winter. Three icy weeks in the Hills changed my mind.
Fortunately, the roan I’d bought in Rapid City knew her way home, even in the dark. The sounds from the saloon led me the rest of the way. No surprise to find the tavern bustin’ at the seams. When the snows start fallin’, most folks just hunker down and drink ‘til spring. ‘Course the biggest problem with a full saloon in a gold-rush town was the high odds of findin’ trouble, ‘specially the kinda trouble I wasn’t lookin’ for.
The trouble I was huntin’ came in the form of my former commanding officer, Colonel Hamilton Gresham, Commander of Company E, 7th U.S. Cavalry, retired. Latest word had him headed west with his new company of killers to make his mark on the world. After Company E’s actions at Wounded Knee, I knew his mark would be made in Lakota blood. I aimed to stop him, along with my nightmares.
