Category: Short Story

Fission

Posted on by Bill Kandiliotis in Short Story

Three days later, the euphoria grew stale.

Three days. That’s all it took to go from amazement and wonder to sheer terror and paranoia. Waking up each day to find that there are two of you does that to a person, I guess.

I wasn’t surprised when ‘it’ happened.

My brain struggled to cope with the reality presented in front of me. One moment, I’m thoughtlessly walking into the bathroom, next I’m confronting a naked stranger gazing into the vanity mirror, holding scissors and a blowdryer, perplexed as I was. Recognition came slowly, due to the fact I knew my face from a reflective surface’s point of view, or from a camera’s perspective. This life-sized version of me seemed off; wrong even.

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Hellscape

Posted on by Bill Kandiliotis in Short Story

First appeared on Wattpad

The sandstorm above had been raging for three days with no end in sight. So intense, the winds toppled vehicles, trucks and all. They eroded away the road leading in and out of the mine, destroying the ramp, even the supertrucks couldn’t scale the man-made canyon.

Workers have become sick. They had fallen weak; their skin had become yellow, not like jaundice, but splotchy yellow pigmentation. According to the doctor, whatever this pestilence was, it wasn’t infectious.

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Subordinate

Posted on by Bill Kandiliotis in Short Story

The function room is modest in size, stark and somberly lit. A low hum from the air conditioner can be heard. Douglas sits at a small conference table with his arms crossed. He has a defiant expression on his face as he looks past the table at another man sitting across from him.

“I must have thought I put them there,” he answers.

Wedged in between paperwork and a laptop, Eric is seated opposite Douglas, fiercely staring at him. “I asked you to place the tongs on the food eleven minutes prior.”

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Chthonic Punk

Posted on by Bill Kandiliotis in Short Story

Aris Forcer sensed it in every cell in his human body.

Another dimension.

Another universe.

Ever since their ordeal with the tesseract, having survived the gatekeeper, nothing had been the same. Not physics. Not biology. Not logic. Everything was upside down, inside out. But he felt alive, and as much as things were different, many aspects of this world were the same.

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The Forever Slave

Posted on by Bill Kandiliotis in Short Story

“A slave?” asked Aris.

“Yes, a slave,” answered Owis, bemused why the Earthman’s facial features had suddenly shrivelled up.

“Why in Gaia’s name did you do that?” asked the renegade cop from the human-infested Milky Way.

Owis thought it obvious, but explained, “This is the slave capital of the Dark Galaxy.”

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Relic Hunters

Posted on by Bill Kandiliotis in Short Story

“It’s a square.”

Silv heard correctly but wanted clarification. “What do you mean a square?”

“Probe One has just completed a second sweep over your location,” said The Captain, sitting comfortably in the Vitalis Express orbiting KIC10905746 C.  “We’ve now got a clearer picture of what’s down there. The anomaly’s actually a large geometric shape, fifty metres wide, just north of your location. In fact, there is a grid of quadrilateral structures underneath a kilometre of nitrogen ice.”

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Cruel Sky

Posted on by Bill Kandiliotis in Short Story

Mez watched the Windslipper 4 disappear from the Command screens. The data streams ended abruptly with millions of zeros trailing each other homogeneously. The humans and mimicrons gasped but their horror didn’t last long. The Jovian Commission’s Fusionjet Program had already gobbled up hundreds of mimicron pilots and eighty-two human explorers. Mez guessed they had grown accustomed to the fatalities. What they weren’t used to was the price tag for this particular launch. Tacacorp, a quasi-government outfit that operated Callisto, was seeking to gain the commission’s contract and had sunk a lot of development into their Windslipper Project.

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Draconis Prime

Posted on by Bill Kandiliotis in Short Story

Of the thousand eyes, one nodalex caught Gnomon’s attention. Idle and unproductive, it sat on the dry sand stacking pebbles into piles.

N-0x7G3BDdE44fe8, thought Gnomon, deciding it pertinent to name the appendage.

Pebblex, Gnomon flagged the wayward nodalex via the ship’s Metatron. Considering how far away from Gnomon-Prime they were, Gnomon considered prudent it personally monitors all anomalies no matter how trivial.

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Lions of the Cross

Posted on by Bill Kandiliotis in History, Short Story

A Snapshot in Time Writing Contest

Cursed be thy Greeks

Damnation beset my fate.

The tower defenders dismantled the upper terrace, using the stone bricks to drop upon our heads. With burning oil and arrows, the misery brought on us by the Greeks plunged my fellow knights, my brothers, into despair. Heaven’s determination to punish our great transgression with this fierce deluge of rain, sent us scampering like mud rats back towards the Bosporus.

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The Tesseract

Posted on by Bill Kandiliotis in Short Story

The featureless salt desert spread out to infinity. The horizon; is nothing but a smooth chrome landscape under a dark taupe sky. The type-2 moon’s gravity helped her along, but the cold surface seemed to sap the warmth out of her suit with every step.

Ashley Isuuza couldn’t complain. She’d craved adventure ever since birth, and no adventure was worth taking without the prospect of death associated with it. So in theory, her little stroll across Obirus b III exemplified the very essence of a perfect, eventful life. Yet Ashley suspected she wasn’t going to live to tell her story.

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