Jim Stitzel
Jack-of-All-Trades, Master of WordsExcerpts from Life
Caught Between a Lull and Quiet Place
I'm sitting here right now, trying to decide what to do with myself. And I don't mean just on an immediate, here-and-now, should I pick up a controller and play a game or write a story sort of way, though that's certainly a part of it. I mostly mean it in the sense of...
Little Black Boxes
The refactoring of Ficlatte has begun. I don't expect this to mean anything to any of you, not even the ones who frequent the site on a regular basis. The work I'm doing right now is 100% completely behind the scenes, hidden by the large curtains that lead to the cold...
Ficlatte, Code, and Making Use of All This Free Time
For the last three or four weeks, I've been coding away feverishly. This, by itself, is notable. I haven't had the energy or the mental focus to work on any project like this for so long in a very long time. It's been exciting and fulfilling to finally feel like I've...
Fiction
A Meeting
An infant, if you can call it that, toddles into the ground floor of a broken skyscraper. The child is naked, but it carries in its hands a white tennis shoe. The infant-creature is warped, misshapen, its skull distended and bulging. It walks on tiptoes as if to be...
Flock-mind
Thousands of birds swarmed through the sky like a great, migratory organism — swelling, shrinking, pulsing according to an invisible rhythm only they could feel. They flew over the countryside, darkening the sky for long moments where they passed, utterly silent but...
Unnatural
Beth turned away from the screen. “Turn it off.” The security footage of Ava’s raw power was sickening. “Girl’s not natural,” Thad said. “Nothing that causes such wanton destruction on a global scale can be natural.” Beth practically spit her next words out. “Of...