A Shared Gift by Furlough MONDAY It was early in the afternoon, and I headed off to the café with a mixture of excitement and dread in the pit of my stomach. That’s where I’d meet with them again, as I did a few times every week. I didn’t have an awful lot of friends I met up with regularly, so it always made me happy to have someone to spend time with. But every single time we got together like ...

All For Me by Furlough Rebecca stared blankly in front of her. Just a few brief moments ago, she wouldn’t have dared think it possible, and yet, there it was: A genie. A stocky, muscular man, or at least half of one, as his lower body, starting at his waist, faded into a mass of thick, wispy smoke, which descended towards the tip of the lamp whence it had first emerged as though in a massive ...

Beyond and Above by Furlough The afternoon sky was overcast, covered in dull-grey clouds that threatened rain. The city below it was outwardly just as dull, teeming with nothing but utterly mundane scenes. Lone birds flitted about between the sky and the street, people walked quietly back and forth trying to get to their destination before the apparent downpour, and the steel frames of cars ...

In-Tune by Furlough Author's note: This story is something of a refurbishment of a shorter tale I started doing for brawna.org a few years ago, back before they ran into technical complications. That story was called “The Wooden Box”, and indeed, the titular object which served as the plot's main catalyst was the biggest takeaway, as the women in that story were high school students rather than ...

Rose awoke with a start. At first she could not say for certain, but it took her only a few seconds to realize that the foundations of the world around her were crumbling — in more ways than one. Indeed, as she frantically scrambled to get up out of bed, now fully aware of the sudden, incredibly strong and very much unexpected earthquake that surrounded her, it seemed to her that her entire home ...