This is not a Dawson’s Creek reunion, I told them as we walked. The former tracks looped into a particularly severe crevice that climbed towards the sky like a tear in the mountain. Small sounds echoed and amplified within like a pyroclastic blast. We exited into more grayness and the acrid stench of vinegar and formaldehyde and sulfur. The wind didn’t purge the smell only intensified it. The ash began to fall shortly after. The grey haze of morning uncovered […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing

We climbed the slippery bank to the now defunct railroad tracks and headed south. The steel from the tracks and spikes gone, torn up for scrap metal long ago before any war. The path dissimilar; doubled, tripled…cloned and yet incomparable. Variables emerged; some noted; other’s banished to the empty where exhaustion ruled. Crossing the trestle or the creek was not an option, not that I would ever want to with all manner of cadavers and calamities lurking in its dark […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing

We argued. It was nothing serious, but still…we argued. Right before. Without exception—we always argued. At the swimming hole, I remembered we debated about what to listen to next after Duran Duran’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Cody wanted Def Leppard’s Pyromania or AC/DC’s Back in Black for the umpteenth time while I wanted Purple Rain. Dad said we can’t listen to that music, Cody complained. Uncle’s not here. It’s my boom box, my music, I told him. I brought […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing