Deep Drop — “Micky!” I dropped Lauren and launched myself into the steam. Her tactical suit should have absorbed the worst of it, but I wasn’t about to test that theory any longer than I had to. We were foreign bodies in here and the less time we wasted making friendly with the…

Deep Drop — Mick’s voice crackled out my helmet speaker. “Did you leave anything at the dome?” “I think there are condiment packets and a matchbook from some place called ‘Short and Stacked,’ but that’s it.” As much as I hated to admit it, I was a bit of a drama queen when…

Deep Drop — I opened my eyes in the rounded-off steel dome that represented our only ingress and egress point. Micky had improved her equipment since the last time I rode with her, either that, or I’d been slumming it for a while and this old bowl was starting to look top shelf. …

Deep Drop — Micky pressed the neural inducer over my head. It fit a little better this time. This made sense as I was missing a few layers of skin that had most likely been getting in the way, also this time she used the gel. “Wow, lube helps.” My ex ignored that…

Deep Drop — “Are you drunk?” I considered shaking my head, but the perfectly manicured yard was moving just a bit too much for that. “No.” Micky narrowed her eyes at me. …

Words to Die By — Stranglers. Skull-crackers. Body Snatchers. They had as many names as there were ghosts out there to tell me about them. It seemed everybody had a story. The dead girl who hung around the changing room at Presley’s, she had a friend that’d been torn to shreds by one. The dude…

Words to Die By — Terrible, be terrible… It wasn’t as easy as Lada made it sound. Sure, anybody living could say some mean shit, or kick someone in the crotch, but here that puts a target on your back, here that makes you a prime candidate for erasure. Here that makes you strangler feed. …

Words to Die By — Well, it wasn’t Mama that told me not to get tethered. That was Lada. We’d met in the early weeks of being dead. She’d taken a header off the bridge. ‘It was an accident.’ Sure, Lada. Sure it was. Still, her propensity for lying aside, Lada had been a good…

Words to Die By — I died. It wasn’t an extravagant affair, and certainly nothing to get your panties in a bunch over. One day I was here, and the next, I was somewhere else entirely. Being dead has its perks, don’t get me wrong. I get to see a lot of movies. I just…