Bryan Beal

It almost tingled. It felt like the nerve endings were dancing in celebration at the end of agony. The absence a tender reminder of the torment endured. The tickling sensation spread over Tane's leg, the other nerve clusters picking up on the joy of nothingness. From with semi-stasis, Tane could feel what was going on within and without. His consciousness was in the hands of another.

Even in the midst of the relief and soothing emptiness, Tane Bridges felt the Counsel's gentle probing of his mind. The Counsel was searching threads of memories. Tane had no idea what ones it was looking for. That no longer mattered. He felt the edges of reality begin to fade into opaque shadows. Colours merged and oozed into coagulated smudges. Around the edges of the blobs, light began to poke through. White dispersed into myriad shades and hues. He threw up on the floor, thankful that the Counsel's metallic hands propped him up so it all went onto the floor. (

“You're no cyber!”, shouted the irrate heckler from the front row.

Lucky for Neon Traxxon, the stage in Terminal Vibes was low. She lifted her treasured guitar slightly. A blur of motion was all the warning anyone got. A plasteel boot slammed into the young man's lower jaw with head-whipping force. At least three teeth flew from his open mouth as he fell back. He tried to get up, but he just wobbled and fell back to the floor. Security found him in seconds, grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him from the place. Neon did not relish him his fate.

In less than a second, the wailing sonics from Neon's modded antique guitar resumed. The remaining crowd filled the empty space and took up their jumping, high impact dance, thundering the floor with their heavy boots. For some of them, boots and feet were one and the same.

© 2023, Bryan Beal

No matter how far down he went, he could not find it. Sitting among the remains of incense sticks poking up like rotted reeds on the bank of a stagnant river, Ulthar Greigg tried to focus his mind on nothingness and the impermanence of the world around him. The solidity of his inability to delve deeper was a glaring argument against the doctrine. A friend had once suggested psychedelics, but Greigg was a purist. He might be a lot of things, but taking short cuts for immediate gains was not his style.

Some would say it had been a long year, but Evelyn felt it the sludgy drag of multiple lifetimes. From her place in the bowels of the Pit, deep under the affluence of NeoTokyo, everything seemed mired in its own existence. Nothing and no one had a vision beyond themselves. Sitting on her chair, between shows, Evelyn wondered what she was doing there. She wondered what she had ever been doing there.

Taking a drag on a tobacco smoke, one of the most illegal substances in the sprawling metropolis, it all came crashing down on her. The voices and noise in the club receded as her mind rushed out of itself. She felt like reality was being sucked out of her through a vortex in the centre of her being. She almost dropped the expensive smoke she was enjoying up to that moment. Reaching out a long-fingered hand, she steadied herself on the bar.