Fantasy Stories

Descent into the Conduit

By Leaf Richards

The air itself was a memory, a ghost of warmth clinging to the outer layers of Oswald’s coveralls. Here, deep beneath the Conglomerate’s lowest accessible levels, the cold bit with a ferocity that defied the official temperature readings of the upper sectors. It was an ancient cold, born of leaking pipes and long-dead heat exchangers, a perpetual winter that had seeped into the very bones of the infrastructure. The metallic tang of decay, thick with the scent of stagnant water and ozone's less cliché cousin – burning copper – clung to everything, a constant reminder of the slow, inevitable entropy at work.

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The Cold Stone

By Eva Suluk

The first true bite of winter had arrived with a dusting of snow, settling like fine sugar over the city's park. Streetlights, still hazy against the pre-dawn gloom, cast long, distorted shadows of skeletal trees across the crisp, untouched white. The air hung still, sharp with the scent of wet earth and impending frost, clinging to wool scarves and chilling fingertips even through gloved hands. A single, rickety wooden bench, half-hidden beneath a snow-laden hawthorn, offered a small, desolate stage for an unscheduled meeting. The quiet was profound, broken only by the distant, muffled sigh of a municipal plough on a main road, a sound that seemed to chew at the edges of the pervasive silence. Everything felt held, expectant, like a breath drawn and waiting to be released.

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A Nickel for a Parallel

By Jamie F. Bell

The oppressive weight of a Winnipeg summer noon pressed down like a hand, the air thick with the scent of hot asphalt and something faintly metallic. Marvin Jessop, a man whose tailored suits had seen more courtrooms than dive bars, adjusted his spectacles, the humid sheen on the glass a minor irritant. He pushed through the glass door of 'Tommy's Sundries and Curios', the jingle of the bell above his head a thin, reedy sound swallowed by the heat. Inside, the cool air promised by the humming, struggling air conditioner was a lie. It was merely less hot, heavy with the cloying sweetness of stale sugar, old newspapers, and something else – something indefinable, like damp dust and the ghost of forgotten ambition.

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Cedar and Contradiction

By Jamie F. Bell

The air in the downtown Winnipeg arts centre, usually thick with the scent of linseed oil and ambition, now carried a distinct whiff of desperation and stale coffee. Outside, a blustery autumn wind rattled the old windows, promising the first hard frost of November. Inside, the only warmth came from the struggling projector fan, its whine a counterpoint to the growing panic in William's chest. Light spilled from the narrow window, painting the scuffed floorboards in weak, watery gold, but failed to illuminate the tangle of cables that was quickly becoming his nemesis.

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