Last Bender

If only the monkeys had died, then we wouldn’t be here now, thought Dr. Bryson. Marketing wouldn’t have gotten a hold of it, and there’d be no shebang in the auditorium, no state involvement. She had made her last stand alone, in committees, and now she would be honored as the leader of a team, inventor of a drug everyone thought was sure to put Monozone back on top.

The lounge was dark, and almost cool after the choking heat of the night air, breezeless and slightly dank with canal water. No one was there. The walls were painted a neutral grey darkened by years of cigarette tar. Brass sconces with amber chandelier lights lit the red tabletops and punctured black cushions of the […]

Shortly after dawn Bryson awoke, unable to sleep. She belched gin. Her stomach was in flames. Bradlee’s wallet and keys were on a steel table and his pants and suit were draped over the back of a black folding chair. She took his white, monogrammed robe off the back of the bedroom door and walked […]

 Once Veronica Clay was certain her husband Felix was at work, she set about her business in a very deliberate way. First she fluffed the cantaloupe and kiwi colored throw pillows on the couch, a grey futon folded against the wall on a tatami mat. She dusted the slate floor, straightened the pen and ink […]

For most of his life, starting as far back as he could remember, Felix Clay had a feeling that something was wrong. Usually he felt like something was wrong with him but it was very easy for him to turn it around and feel that something was wrong with the world. Things didn’t fit right, […]

The time bell went off and the screen shrank to a dot. He stood his lifeless body up, removed the squeaky skull cap of CellPack, reached for the ceiling, touched his toes and marched out the door to join the others. His bladder was backing up into his kidneys, poisoning his blood. Something was using […]

As Felix unlocked his silver bike in a pool of blue street light filled with billows of mosquitoes and gnats he thought that he might as well go straight to Les Jardeen and call home from there. If Veronica wanted to join him for dinner (which he doubted) she could ride into town. Normally (whatever […]

Sonny ‘Bop’ Molloy and Deb Shannon, of the Hudson County security forces, assigned to the town of Hartland, serving in the Rockland Precinct, landed their armored, four person hovercraft on the street outside of Felix and Veronica’s home and got out. Their faces were nearly invisible behind the thick globe of CellPack that encased their […]

Veronica was much closer to death than the Medivac team had led on. They had gotten to her in time however and there was no permanent damage done to her brain or liver. The wounds to her arms were superficial and would heal, but without cosmetic surgery there’d be scars.
That first night Felix sat in […]

Something, growing suspicion perhaps, propelled Dr. Ruth Bryson from Owen Bradlee’s apartment, down the elevator and into a Personal Commuter Pod station a block away. She hadn’t even brushed her teeth.
The morning air was chilly and dry. It blew down on the concrete platform, two stories above the street. She leaned against the dark blue […]