Category Archives: Fiction

Report on the Incidents near Fissure 8

by Julie Jones

Pele’s Dolphins: When lava flow reaches speeds in excess of 28 kilometers per hour within a channel that has developed standing waves, oblong clumps of lava may be seen to leap out of the channel like dolphins at play. The conditions present for this phenomenon to occur indicate radical subsurface shifting of tectonic plates in the volcanic region on the order of three meters per day which allow massive new globules of magma to jet upwards into an existing volcanic edifice. Pele’s dolphins are the first observable evidence of this underlying though undetectable activity.
Source: F. Ka`uhane and D. Sepúlveda. “Detecting Magma Sources from Observable Phenomena: New Insights from Kilauea.” Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, vol. 365, no. 2, pp. 126-137 (2021).

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United States Geological Survey Form 1021B
Personnel Management Report
Subject: Danissa Sepúlveda
Submitted by: Agna Grímsdóttir
Date: July 20, 2018

It is with deep regret that I am compelled to submit this report to the official file of Dr. Danissa Sepúlveda. I had recruited her only six months previous from the Chilean Ministry of Geology and Minerals on the belief that her experience with the Andean Volcanic Belt might spark fresh insights here. Her field notes related to the incidents in question are attached as Appendix A to this report, and her video logs have been archived on the H:/ drive. However, if any failure is found with the handling of this affair, responsibility should be laid on me. Continue reading

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Just the Facts

by Vivian Lawry

I was my younger sister’s maid of honor when she married her high school sweetheart a year after graduation, and fifty years later I was her matron of honor when she married him again—and I hope to tell you that finding an appropriate outfit for a sixty-something matron of honor was no easy task— Continue reading

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The Poisoned Birds Come Home To Roost

by Susan Taylor Chehak

It’s called a murmuration, when the starlings flock together and swoop like that, as one, a great cloud of them, moving in synchrony. How do they know? Who keeps the choreography?

Elf is considering the squalor of the kitchen at the north end of his (ex-)girlfriend’s trailer. Ariel. Or: that tramp, as his mother calls her, which never fails to make Elf wince and flinch, even though he knows that’s just the purpose and the point. His older brother only smiles; his younger brother elbows him and laughs. Elf is a small man, in full sync with his name: Elf, short for Elfred, and he doesn’t know why they can’t just call him Fred. He’s not quite the runt of the litter, but that same laughing younger one of his two brothers—the latecomer, as he’s sometimes fondly called, though not by Elf—isn’t yet full-grown, and because his father doesn’t happen to be the same as Elf’s, it very likely won’t be long before he’s outpaced his older brothers both. Continue reading

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My Neighbor: Whoever He Was, Whatever He Did

by T. E. Cowell

I was having a smoke out on my balcony when I heard someone knocking so loudly, with such force that I nearly dropped my cigarette in alarm. The knocking stopped just as abruptly as it started, and I rested my cigarette on the side of my ashtray. I was about to go inside to see who was there when the knocking started up again, and I realized now that it wasn’t my door being knocked on but my neighbor’s. Then I heard, “Police! Open the door!” Continue reading

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Pigeon

by Nathan Alling Long

Before the pigeon, I woke up with worry, a stone of dread that would skip from the leak in the roof to the water bill, from the pile of unwashed clothes to the peeling paint on the window sills.  It would eventually settle in one spot in the pool of doubt and sink down deep—to a reoccurring tooth ache, the check engine light in the car, the credit card bill that depleted its limit like diminishing oxygen in a mine shaft.

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