Captured in the rain and looking toward the hill, we ran. The rumble of the swarm oscillated with the falling water to the point we couldn’t hear our own footsteps. It might as well have been the silence of white noise, and suddenly… it was. For out of the hill rose a beast with a…
He was a kind old soul, trudging to and fro. Where there wasn’t a path, he would spend days making one with his wooden spoon, large feet and a whistle you had only to hear once to remember forever. With the grass and branches he did something strange though. Bundled them up and set ablaze…
We wrapped a few of them in toasted cheese curdles and a donut. “Don’t worry, you’ll realize the potential after you taste it.” That’s what she kept saying, but we were not convinced. Food just shouldn’t look like that, and the way they exploded if you handled them too rough? Well, it only made it…
We would pop a few over the fence, just to hear the reaction. It was usually a grumble of sorts, a low guttural sound of pre-digested enzymes breaking down the fats. We had yet to see it, until one day, when we bound ten together around a ball of butter. Lowering it slowly, we saw…
We had already eaten our fill when they wheeled out the largest bucket we had ever seen–it’s why they had removed the wall and fitted that senile, old robot lady with two railgun arms. The smell was yeasty, but soon forgotten after they handed us our bibs, and a fork for each hand. They told…
The muscles tightened before we could even jump. It was high, but shorter than the last fall. It’s the last 20 feet that gets you. Hitting the thrust reversers at just the right moment, so you don’t finish the descent with a splintered femur, or disturb the beast by charring the landing pad, that is…
Flipping along the line, high above the glassy churn, the wisps hit the wind before finding their way onto our arms. Being this high was never a problem. It’s when we neared the surface that the fear sunk in. They looked like glass, cut like glass, but their sound was much more like these links.…
In total, there were enough to overtake us blindfolded with all of their whip-arms tied behind their backs. But we had a tub of things they would never suspect. A toothbrush used by Neil, A hollow can enchanted with cat tears by a welder named Larry, two tufts of hair pulled from the back of…
They flared. We stepped back. Who know what those things could have done. There were stories of them taking the skin right off you, clothes still on. What seemed so strange is what they were lined with. Yes, it was strange. And true. The nostrils were lined with these links. Wojtek Fus – Wow environments.…
“Tim! Shut the door!” Brin always made the crew nervous before a launch. She was on edge most the time, but always after a particularly messy run in with Lorackian pod hoppers from the outer reaches. This time, we would all be strapped in, ready to fire the blast rockets, when the attack came. We…
It rose, within a wave, and the shrieks were muffled but a second before the water shed from the five orifices, gasping the air and wrenching the deepest guttural sounds ever heard. We readied our blades, we steadied our base and triggered the liquid that would slay the beast with the oil of these links.…
Blasts of fur sent bits and stings rippling across our bony structure. They were no match for us. However, we didn’t expect what they had, lain and buried beneath the loose soil we tread upon unknowingly. The burn was intense, like biscuits soaked in the gravy of these links. Teun van der Zalm – Nebulas.…
Tendrils stretch between the slender thicket, lining the path, worn through over the centuries. The smell was like oranges, but slightly rancid. That when we saw it sitting there. Large, half-blind of years without light, thumbing an Outdoor Living magazine, and gnawing on these links. Antonis Karidis – Incredible set of aircraft–real, conceptual and spacebound–with…
When we pulled them from our pockets, sopping wet, ready to be hurled through the blades, we didn’t realize how many we needed. Then it happened. In one fell swoop, hundreds landed around us carrying thousands more milk balls, contained solely by the mesh-like energy of these links. Wadim Kashin – Absolutely delicious impressionist style…
We jumped two by two into each puddle. It could have gone on all day, poppin’ and hoppin’ like those small, mechanical bugs we would squish on the walls, just to see them spark and explode. Those bugs. Yes, the same we use to ride in the summers. But the memory of what happened between…
The cheese was curdled and it took all you could just to throw it far enough. After all, think of what would happen if you didn’t. Now was the time of thieve-meal, when anything was free to be taken no matter the cost, when the air was unbreathable and moss grew on all sides of…
A rabbit with a stinger? Never had such a creature shown itself, but when the bolts fell, nothing but embers, a faint crackling and its growl filled the room. We thought using them as shields would save us, their backskin thick as an ox hoof, but it seemed that nothing could stop its claws soaked…
The tall man flitted about, skipping across the cracks and dancing merrily, whistling, humming, strumming his broom. Perhaps there were a few times we wished he would stop, but the glare he gave warned us of a consequence that would deliver the full force of his song, sung violently from the bowels of these links.…
Locked in the moss-clad, iron-sided shed the sound reverberated with each drop. It fell from the sky, shifting the color, filling any exposed crevice, leaking in through the cracks where the light changed from orange to white and back. Thicker and thicker they grew, watery meat sniggles, hatched by these links. Ai Shah – It…
We blew past them in a spritz of gravel and glass, popping the shrubberies like catapulted rocks into the air. We could handle the speed–oh, we could handle the speed–what we couldn’t handle was how fast our skin would recoil once we came to a stop. Five seconds before that happened, the unthinkable occurred. The…
We looked hither, we looked yonder, and all we saw was more than we could take in with our eyes. Light whipping from their fur, jowls blazing and toothless gums gumming their way toward our legs. We had to get out of the rising tide, and all we had were five wasp heads and a…
A loud noise and thin sheets of metal fell. Though it had peeled off its thin cosmetic lid, the thick frame revealed how many porcupine quills it took to construct such a creature. Bare like their creation, they gnawed bark pails, dipping their paws into these links. Matt Tkocz – Matt does it all and…
Crinkled skin and bloodshot eyes filled the light as it passed by. Once we had thought there would be plenty of dark to hide such a hideous sight, but whatever it was doing with its fleshy skin-cicles in the core chamber was changing things, and most likely, it had something to do with a moisturizer…
A stick lattice fence grew against the prairie hills, looking half forgotten, but for the kempt hedgerow and berries picked clean. We watched for days wondering when their days started, ended and what they did between. It wasn’t that we meant to harvest them, but to learn how they moved. With lop-sided heads, half fur…
It was a bottle of buns, and two of gravy. Though it took a few minutes for our eyes to adjust to the dim lit counter, we were able to form the gravy balls minutes before the attack began. We were ready, with just enough extra pepper juice to heighten our senses, squeezed and extracted…
They burnt on days we didn’t have the light. Risking our hairs and skins, we gathered close. The candles were all we had, and the nimphs, oh how they liked to blow them out. That was until the CandleMan came to visit. Large, made mostly of wax and wick, they feared him, as did we,…
Built on their foreheads, we travelled far and the days we’re indistinguishable. A golem? Yes. A rabbit? Of course. You couldn’t expect such a creature to stay dormant forever. Their size and a step will keep them moving for years, always, endlessly, in search of these links. Markus Lenz – Markus has a particular style…
The orange popped. Not the color. The fruit. We thought we were the last on the platform, but something down the tunnel let us know otherwise. Its squeal burst the last of our food, then there they appeared, lapping up the juice and garbed in these links. Isaac Hannaford – There’s just something about good…
The papers clanged. But how? It was normal paper after all–white, some edges creased, even a coffee cup stain here and there. But they were different in the light. Silver they shown, and around their edges the glow of an aged cosmos burnt by the vacuum-cracking blast of a thousand bursting moons. No, this wasn’t…
The chamber door sent impact shudders through the last nerves of the last inhabitants of the last inhabitable cave of the last inhabitable planet. How? Out in the darkness? The outer reaches of the outer reaches of the known beyond the known universe. One thousand years from then it would be obvious. It was they…
An eye, no three, past in front of the crack made by its last wood-splitting hit. There hadn’t been any of their kind pass through here in months, so it was about due. All we had to do now is wait. You usually don’t attack someone when their back is turned–it’s proper killing etiquette–but with…
It was a party of pigeons and pygmy goats. One against the other? No, they were in cahoots. The pigeons, responsible for logistics. The goats responsible for ballistics. Together they were a team, nay, a force, that could only be described at lethal. And in the midst of all of them, their leader– hairless, war-torn,…
The cones cracked beneath our feet, and the air was putrid, but we were able to finally find how the rasp moths had burrowed through. Though they were large, their main bodies were more like lubricated jelly sacks, able to squeeze through the tightest spaces, most likely moistened from the glandular excretions of these links.…
The rice grains pelted our faces–our faces shielded by pan-seared tortillas, haha! The joke was on them. Not even the soggy, beef soaked jabs of their tendrils could turn us away. However, we knew the corn-based shielding wouldn’t survive the night, forcing us to sizzle up some charred rabbit fur to weave into the protective…
Four pinstripes and a melon. That’s all the payment we could gather. Down among the shantie with tattered cloth and mud holding make-shift walls to the ground, droids would peek from the blinds, unsure if they would be extracted or provided parts. Why we were able to get a melon in these parts, we’ll never…
“What a large box of meats!” said I, hiding the pan of heated oil behind the swollen belly of a grossly oversized Patagonian Cavy. They looked at me puzzled, shimmying to the side, their feet stirring the dust, and quickly grabbing the buried cable to shield themselves with pulsating power of these links. Joel Rae…
Sauntering she stepped. The steel toed shift of air against steal echoed up through its structure. Side-stepping something that had tried before, she climbed, slow at first, then with speed, to kick through the membrane protecting these links. Pablo Carpio – What starts as really loose sketches, ends up as floating vehicle concepts, beautiful mountainscapes…
A fine mist settled, thin against the green bladed spears that jutted above. With an icy silence we stepped slowly, wanting to run, to duck and cover ourselves with the mist, to escape the rabbit banshees on the hunt for these links. Thibault Girard – Gritty scenes, ships and characters with an interesting method of…
They spread from the ground like black ink from a swollen tear duct. How would ink come to be in a tear duct? Well, when the virus takes hold, you never know how it will manifests itself. Sometimes, the sky goes sparkly, sometimes your skin bubbles, sometimes birds shoot out of the ground. One thing…
We flew around the peak. The moss fires put us in a orange haze and gave the air a sappy taste. We wouldn’t be able to set down anywhere nearby, so we hung the drag lines out the side, hoping that whatever was down there shrieking wasn’t large enough to pull us down with it.…
And so it went, on and on, the taps against the wood, the cracks along the grain. It went dark, and the sound all but stop. A long breath out to test the air, I peeled back the skin of the unearthed larvae casing, and push the squirming cychlid into these links. Nima Sprout -…
The bubbles rose in front of our faces, nearly lifting us off the plateau along with the wee furry beasts from whence the bubbles exploded out of their neck hairs, which we quickly learned were not hairs at all, but hydrogen absorbing tubulars generating power through the digestion of these links. Tomas Honz – Beautiful…
We threw it hard, like we had five arms each and the strength of a cattle-prodded meglephant. It was only a small asteroid, mostly ore, filled with holes growing the orange fungii we could no longer harvest. With the atmosphere decaying and a lack of constant moisture, it had completely succumbed to these links. Kelly…
The stage went black. More screams were the least of what we wanted to hear, but that’s what happens in the dark, just before thousands of people start throwing snowcones and muffin pans at each other. Fortunately, we had a secret weapon, wrapped tightly in a bubblegum wrapper, ready to be deployed with these links.…
The dust settled, then floated. The air grew thick, rabbit fur and gopher whiskers everywhere. Where did it come from? When had there been such an excess of gophers? We pondered long, but not too long, for they were on our heels, ready to attack, ready to devour, ready to gnaw the eyelids off anyone…
The sea was it. Salty air, stormy waters and if you hung your jowls above the surface as the sun was setting, the tentacles of speckle-throated Cuttlefish gently slap your check as they breached the watery sheath. We thought they were attracted to the smell of our stew. Turns out it was the peculiar sap…
Catch them, the wiles, the frozen pots of two. Wrapped and bent around the child, as he bid them to, lift him him up and throw his arrows made of dust and rusty nails, skin cracked, glowing, dark as ink, battling the splendor of these links. Rostislav Zagornov – Chunky speed paintings and concepts with light and shadow that…
Wet towels and pencil shavings were not the usual waste left by the weekend party crowd. Somehow the sand imps and moss trolls had fastened their battleground to our deck, all of it, and the yard, shredding the begonias with their shrill cries and pummeling each other with these links. Kong youyang – With such…
Brick by brick they climbed, chiseling chunks of the chocolate vines until their packs were full. Yet, the didn’t expect it to transform, forming that hard brown shell around, impenetrably infused with these raspberry chip links. Gabriel Silveira – Illustration from the São Paulo based artist that slaps you with rich color, awesome detail and…
Blocks were stacked pyramidically across the barren landscape, dust wafting off the rusted surface. Their eastern edges moss-stained, both reaching and stayed by the sun, were the fence we peered past, checking for any opportunity to escape, to sneak away the soft, raw happy strands, extracted from these links. Jessica Rossier – Ahhh. Some of…