Deathwatch

Mike Grist Science Fiction, Stories 5 Comments

It’s a beautiful day already. The sun is up and dawning like a golden rip in the pewter and orange sky, leaking rays of light across the blue ocean and bridge. Everything is still. It’s a beginning, the start of a new day. Strange thing is, everything that matters is already over. The man lies pinioned to the grindstone of the bridge, door heavy over his slack frame, I’m kneeling here beside him, and the kid has gone for coffee and bagels. We’re all ready, in our places, but there’s nothing left to wait for. The salt sea breeze rubs …

Fade Out

Mike Grist Science Fiction, Stories 7 Comments

They strapped a man to the ceiling today. I know him. His name is Wasari Ichimura. I tried to talk to him afterwards but he wasn’t interested, and I was too tired to give chase. Most days now, my muscles don’t stop shaking ’til past midnight. You’d think you’d get used to it. Even now, my last desk job 12 years distant, my frame swelled by 50 or so pounds, I still shake through the night. My wife thinks it’s funny. Thought it was funny. Now it just scares us both. Wasari is younger than me. I don’t think he …

Fortune City

Mike Grist Science Fiction, Stories 2 Comments

I started talking out loud around 3, I think. It’s a sweltering day, but that’s no excuse. It’s more to do with the height, I think. The wind rushing in my ears and I couldn’t hear a damn thing I was thinking. What was I saying? Oh. I started saying things like this. “I really want a tuna sandwich, I don’t know if I can do this without a tuna sandwich, I think I really need one. perhaps I should call the vets and make an appointment for Barney the goldfish. I want a sandwich. The knife is digging into …

Universal Time

Mike Grist Science Fiction, Stories 2 Comments

I’m working the deep 7 run again. Last time I was out here, must’ve been pre-schism. Before the split, and opinion divided the universe. -Blah blah. That’s what my mistress says, when I try to discuss politics. -All I can hear is blah blah. I suppose she reckons I don’t know more than anybody else, but maybe that’s not true anymore. I move in high places now. I deal with leaders of worlds. I see their colonies, their technologies, their lives, as part of the whole. I can still see the Empire, in the echoes, while all they see is …

Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile @ Something Wicked

Mike Grist Books, Jabbler's Mons, Stories, Story Art 4 Comments

Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile is my first story ever to find publication in a print medium, and I couldn’t have asked for a better debut. The cover-art on the right is a specially commissioned artist’s impression of a scene from the story: the Grammaton looming up from a city in flames. I had no idea Freemantle was going to take the cover like this- so when I saw it I was effusive in my thanks to both editor (Joe Vaz) and artist (Hendricke Gericke). What an honor- thanks again. You can go buy a copy of this magazine, or …

The Blue Chipset and the Thing

Mike Grist Science Fiction, Stories 2 Comments

I’m standing at the Way-station Hub. Everybody around me is dead. I’m holding the blue chipset in my hand and I’m willing it to work. Over my head the sky is swirling. It’s a purple vortex. I’m waiting for it all to end. Outside the Way-station the desert winds blow hard. There are scraggle-lined black creatures dancing in the sand-storms. They flit from shimmer to shade and I can never quite see them clearly. The Thing stomped here. The desert was leveled. Everybody died. The Way-station survived. And I, because I have the chipset, because I am what I am, …

The People in the Walls

Mike Grist Stories, Surreal 4 Comments

The people in the walls are an infestation. They crowd around the living room in their inch-thin insulation space and watch me while I go about my life. Some of them have drilled peep-holes. I cover the holes with paintings I paint myself, and vases full of flowers which they sometimes steal and eat. I paint paintings of the people in the walls. I suppose they look a little bit like aliens. They have big and flat grey heads an inch thick. They look a lot like stick men. They are normally smiling stick-thin smiles, which creeps me out. I …

The Giant Robot and the Myna Bird

Mike Grist Science Fiction, Stories 5 Comments

The giant robot stalked the empty world, looking for its lost arm. It had fought in many wars, from the beginning to the end. In ancient Thrace it had brought down the gates of Thermopylae. In Samarkand it had crushed the Czar’s men underfoot. On the fields of the Somme it had walked the no-man’s land and razed the flags of the Third Reich. Towards the end had been the lasers. The large bombs; the A-bomb, and the B-bomb that followed it. Artillery that could shred its skin, and tanks that could push it over. Then there had been the …

The Mistman @ Byzarium

Mike Grist Books, Fantasy, Stories Leave a Comment

My story the Mistman just went live at Byzarium! “There was a village in the mountains at the top of the world that was always shrouded in mist. Its name was Ballahee, and in it lived a small community of people, good people, who tended to their crops on the mountainsides, and looked after their sheep and their hardy goats. The villagers had many problems, such as the cold winters and the wolves in the scrub-woods, but by far their biggest problem was the mist. The mist had always been there, and the villagers knew there was nothing they could …

Flatland

Mike Grist Fantasy, Stories Leave a Comment

At the center of Flatland there was a tall sky-scraper, thirty stories high. In the skyscraper were many offices, filled with workers who spent their days typing at their ledgers, recording the business of Flatland that they could see out of their windows. After their work was finished every day, they left the skyscraper and went to their homes. They lived in houses and farms spread around the town-†the only town in Flatland. Flatland was not very big. Perhaps as big as six†football fields. Fotheringay, the CEO of the skyscraper in the center of Flatland, lived on the thirtieth floor. …