Hugh J. O'Donnell

The wizard descended from the sky and rejoined his companions. “My friends! The Sorcerer King is all but defeated! I have met him in magical combat, and bested him. Even now, the cur flees, but if we hurry, we can cut off his escape!”
The rest of the party glanced around awkwardly.
“What is it? Don’t tell me you’ve all lost your resolve!” he said peevishly. The cleric set a mirror down in front of him, and the wizard finally noticed that he had been transformed into a chicken. “Huh. Well, strap a couple wands to me and let’s go!”

She eased her ship into a docking orbit with the dead asteroid and inspected her home for damage.
From the outside, the mining colony didn’t look too bad. You wouldn’t know that everyone inside had died catastrophically.
It had started out as a peaceful miner’s strike. Corp news nets called them riots and sent a platoon of security officers to ‘resolve the escalating violence.’ Something ignited the colony’s atmosphere three hours later.
The corp labelled it a terrorist action by the strikers. She was going to find out the truth, and show the whole system who the corp really was.

“If you want to be the best,” she said, climbing into the seat of the contraption. “You have to think big. Even if you’re a bicycle thief!”
“It’s certainly big,” I said. The pile of wheels, gears and pedals stretched ten feet high.
“The Omnicycle is a work of genius! Every stolen bicycle will become a part of the frame! I’ll steal entire racks at once!” She cackled and began peddling furiously. She was almost to the gate before two gears locked and threw her from the seat.
“There may be some kinks to work out,” she said.
“Do tell.”

He returned to base grinning like a fool and fiddling with an old pocket watch.
“Hey, where’d you get the fancy watch?” One of the other soldiers asked.
“So I’m in the city and I see this girl running from two creeps, right? I step in, and get her out of there, and one thing leads to another, and the next morning she runs for the train and forgets her watch.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Nah, man. I’m going to find her after the war.”
“Whatever. You probably found it in a pawns shop.”
The watch exploded two days later.

The girl lay on the bed, asleep, but unquiet. She tossed and turned in the darkness, haunted by unpleasant dreams.
Her nightmare was curled up beside her on the mattress. It was a vague and formless thing, built from her fears and anxieties. It bristled with spines and claws. Needle teeth protruded from its maw.
It lay still and watched her through inhuman eyes. It took in her bedroom, and saw past it to the places a human couldn’t. It saw the things stalking her.
It was her nightmare, and it loved her. It would keep her safe from harm.

The wolf came and sat by her fire every night. It was huge, and so black she only see it by its eyes and the absence of stars. It never spoke, but there was something intelligent and otherworldly in its gaze.
Sometimes, it would present her with a kill, and she’d roast it over the fire. Sometimes it would sit and loll it’s huge tongue, and she would share her water.
Over time, she came to think of it almost as a friend. She had found precious little other company out in the wasteland.
But it never led her home.

In his darkroom, the photographer stared down at the portrait developing in front of him. It was… wrong.
That was definitely the young Widow Dagmar posed in somber black with the requested symbolic elements. The skull on her lap, and the scales beside her, were all as he had set them. But where had the moth come from?
It was so bright it seemed to glow, hovering above her left hand. He was sure wasn’t there when he took the picture.
He brushed one gloved hand against the glossy paper, and his fingers came back dusty with moth wing powder.