Doctor Fantastique’s Web Originals

The Preacher declared that the unbelievers be destroyed, in a land faraway where they mocked the Testament. Nameless workers—their names appropriated by the state when their status changed—mined coal deep in the barren earth and iron, mixing their blood in the coke. They hammered steel into steamflies for sky-flight and filled their bellies with uranium bombs and copies of the Testament carved onto steel sheets to survive the conflagration. Eyes will burn. And they will at least see. We save them all. The Preacher promised his people in the land that forgot its name that no enemy ship will...

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Or The Four Yorkshiremen Play with Dr. Fantastique’s Time Machine and Have a Jolly Bit of Fun (with apologies to John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Marty Feldman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Douglas Adams, Sir Terry Pratchett, Gene Wilder, and Mel Brooks) Royal Interior Decorator, Sir Timothy Nordham Cantor, settled against the cushions of his parlour chair and recounted the day’s proceedings. Everything had gone well, considering. It’s not as though he had planned to set the Lady Noddingbottom’s hair on fire whilst attempting to rearrange her sitting room for a more welcoming feel. It...

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She sat with the old man’s head in her lap, stroking his hair. While he stared without blinking, she ran her fingers across his forehead and back through the thin strands of white at his temples. Some part of her knew he would not get up again, would not speak, move, live, but he had not made her to do anything other than love him, so she bent low over his still form, humming softly to herself, hands moving gently over cooling skin. She had been the first. He was young, strong, full of pride and quick ambition when...

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It was their sixteenth day of walking but it felt like forever. Isabella’s eye’s were sunk deep into her skull, as if her body was protecting her innocence from the harshness of the reality all around them. “Father, I’m hungry,” she said again, in a voice as thin as smoke. Manfred looked at her with a love as real as the earth itself and almost wept at what a sin it was to bring such beauty into this godless world. “Soon Isabella,” he lied, “we’ll get you something soon.” The land before them was desolate and broken, a no-mans...

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Grains of sand slide between my toes with the softness of time, like abrasive tongues. I walk the shore slowly, lulled by the crash and swish of tireless waves. The ocean always calls, and I come to it. Darkness envelops me as I approach the rising tide. The wind snags at my dress, thin cloth on cold skin. It pulls my hair, makes it dance wild around me. I taste the ocean on my lips, salt and bitter, a patient lover of skin. A few daring stars give shape to the world, infinite sky above inky ocean, me on...

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