Reading Time: 8 minutes The door is heavy, about four inches thick. A long narrow staircase leads down into darkness. He is in total darkness. Feeling his way slowly along the wall, carefully tapping his feet to see where the stairs begin, he finds a light switch. Harsh fluorescence floods the stairwell. This light would make anyone look dead, River thinks.
Reading Time: 4 minutes Magic circles, incantations—could this be enough to bring back Amelia Earhart?
Reading Time: 4 minutes David volunteers for NASA’s Body Donor program, where human corpses are exchanged for advanced knowledge of an alien species.
Reading Time: 7 minutes Pamela stands in the doorway. River stops stirring and opens his arms. Pamela doesn’t even need to cross the room. She melts into him, soft as butter into flour. She is cold, damp as night fog.
Gods and Monsters Installment 29: Beautiful and Strange Read More »
Reading Time: 3 minutes There’s an aswang on the loose and it’s up to us to deal with it. Don’t forget to bring trash bags…
Reading Time: 4 minutes When Gretel grew up, she left the Sugar-Candy House and the forest behind her, but some stories won’t allow you to walk away.
Reading Time: 8 minutes That night, Jackson does not come to Bert’s.
Reading Time: 4 minutes First dates are always scary, but sometimes fear can be delicious.
Reading Time: 6 minutes Jim is standing on the rocky shore of a dark underground river. The only sound is the constant thrum of pebbles which gently lapping waves draw back and fling up the high strand. There is a whisper, the sound of a shadow gliding over hard round stones. Against the blackness he sees a man, tall and lean.
Reading Time: 3 minutes This piece imagines a future world where apologies are necessary for every step of personal interactions with others.
I Regret Any Future Impact of My Words and Actions Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutes A desperate young Wiccan encounters an archetypal presence in a shopping mall Santa.
Reading Time: 6 minutes Glistening like a frozen tear, delicate as a kiss, the crystal necklace lies on wine velvet cloth. Jim has never seen anything so lovely and flawless. His breath catches in his throat. It’s out of his price range. There’s no way he can afford it. There’s no way he can walk away. Something in the manner the colors intertwine weaves around his soul.
Reading Time: 4 minutes One million, two hundred-thousand seconds later, the reporter from the Tribune sips his coffee and raises his hand. “I just don’t see how people can be expected to trust you after an incident like this.”
Reading Time: 7 minutes It is the first time Gabriel has heard birdsong. Usually, birds drop lifeless at his feet. Hearing the song, Gabriel is warmed by an invincible summer. He stretches his arms toward the light.
Gods and Monsters Installment 25: In the Time of Many Pigeons Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutes A young slaver unknowingly captures her childhood friend, and must consider the extent to which they are each beyond salvation.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Dust fur falls like rain, feathering into the plumes of a dove. The dove’s wings become sleeves. Amimi is shining like a hologram in the glooming.
Gods and Monsters Installment 24: Wastelands of the Wild Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutes A group of mannequins from a fashion department store dream of becoming real women.
Reading Time: 7 minutes In the night shadows of trees, shunning the moonlight, a man waits. It is Kristjan, taller than Jim remembers. He is nearly naked, covered only by a wolf skin. In the night, his eyes glow red. As Jim looks at him, unable to turn away, something dark slips beneath Jim’s fingernails, flowing like a shadow into his blood.
Reading Time: 8 minutes When Ancient Mexican gods visit Venice Beach California, America gets a change of dirt.
How Chaac the Rain God Moved to Venice and Became a Glutton-Free Vegan Read More »
Reading Time: 3 minutes Don’t blame her. She knew that if she avoided the knife, she could grant her city centuries to grow and thrive. She also believed if she made that choice, she would die by year’s end.
Reading Time: 6 minutes When a Virgin is seen in a small Mexican town it’s a miracle – the town is blessed… or is it?
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the mornings, if he wakes beside the dust of a beautiful stranger, he knows he’s drained the world of a bit of color, a bit of beauty, however deadly.
Reading Time: 14 minutes A cosmic traveller helps a grieving fisherman to deal with his trauma.
Reading Time: 4 minutes They knew each other very well, as much as the Law would allow. Their children were beautiful, curious, and kind. To know where they were now, or what their mother looked like, could lose him everything.
Reading Time: 5 minutes Jason’s daughter, Sarah, approached him one morning and said, “Daddy, the Shadow Man is back.”
Reading Time: 8 minutes Out of the earth, up through the floor, dust rises. It clings together, forming a translucent woman. She is brown as earth. Her face is worn. Her eyes are shadows in the night. Red paint dots her cheeks and ears. Her hair is made of darkness, the part decorated by a circle of crimson. “I am Amimi, matriarch of the Lenni Lenape,” she says.
Gods and Monsters Installment 21: Out of Dust – The Lenni Lenape Read More »
Reading Time: 2 minutes How will a child react to his father’s unsettling business decisions?
Reading Time: 5 minutes An old man’s dedication to his garden goes beyond the grave.
Reading Time: 4 minutes The emigrants to Planar6 have survived the voyage from Earth via conversion to semi-sentient fungal forms, a process that is reversed upon arrival. The trouble is, one of the crew prefers to stay the way they are…
Reading Time: 4 minutes A budding student sci-fi writer applies to the Rod Serling School because of the celebrity’s name attached to the school. When a salesman comes by the house to pitch the school, her father joins the conversation, with unexpected results.
Reading Time: 5 minutes Mr. Jones appears to have been mauled by a wild animal. His body shows evidence of teeth marks and claw marks. The wounds are uncommon.
Gods and Monsters Installment 20: The Love Song of the Mole Cricket Read More »
Reading Time: 3 minutes What does it mean to be human? Other species may never understand, but they can have fun pretending.
Reading Time: 3 minutes He is deeply fascinated by growth. And he’s ready to sacrifice a lot for its sake…
Reading Time: 7 minutes I drove that ancient pick-up all the way out into the Catskill Mountains. Even after that trek, that good old Ford was running strong. Still is. I rented a place out in the woods about ten miles from Greene Village, New York. It was tiny; just bed, bath, and stove, but I didn’t need more.
Gods and Monsters Installment 19: Lonely Journeys Read More »
Reading Time: 7 minutes In the environmentally and economically devastated not-so-distant future, best friends Pen and Lissy have fought for years simply to survive. After a lifetime of struggle, Lissy is desperate for escape, and decides uploading her mind onto a computer chip – complete with home-designed software – is her only option.
Reading Time: 5 minutes The funeral was hard. But the thing that helped me smile through the tears was counting the times Tom had sat on top of hotter pyres and lived.
Reading Time: 8 minutes He awoke at dawn, sore and scratched. His mouth, clothes, and limbs were covered with gore. His clothes were in tatters. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, trying to remember.
Gods and Monsters Installment 18: We Are The Stuff That Genes Are Made Of Read More »
Reading Time: 15 minutes A strange star is spotted in the distant sky. Scientists watch as its near miss brings humanity to its knees.
Reading Time: 4 minutes “Path!” Glinda paused so abruptly the six foot necromancer slammed into her, tangling himself in the wild frizz of her white hair. Glinda waved a white diamante-studded glove at the waist-high grass. “This is hardly a path, Snark. This is a swamp!”
Reading Time: 7 minutes “Where did you get the gun, River?” Jackson asks. River looks down. His right hand is wrapped around a cold black gun.
Gods and Monsters Installment 17: Moirai Mechanics Read More »
Reading Time: 2 minutes A hungry ghost, pockets full of whatever money he could collect, visits his favorite diner on Halloween
Reading Time: 3 minutes When a robot does something right, Dr. R says, “Look, Mr. Butterfield. A breakthrough, Mr. Butterfield. What do you think of that, Mr. Butterfield?” It goes in a box with the other good robots, then trucks come to get them. When you’re good, you go outside.
Reading Time: 5 minutes While his father’s once-famous bait shop struggles to survive against the threat of an impending storm, Dill encounters an unexpected solution.
Reading Time: 7 minutes Gabriel awakes to his monotone world. The white sun is reaching fingers through the twisted roots of orchids. As Gabriel looks toward the light, he sees that a flower’s throat is freckled deep crimson. On the table, a cigarette paper is dark red. Everywhere, the world is streaked, stained, and tinted.
Reading Time: 4 minutes The earliest account is from our foremother, Rhoda. You know her better as Red Riding Hood. That’s right, she was a real person. Back then, the handbag was still a handbasket, but more on that later.
Reading Time: 9 minutes Sometimes, from my prison cell, when the time of year was right and the night was clear, I could see Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Many ancient cultures thought of it as a dog, or a wolf. For me, it was a beacon of hope between the bars. Just one light in the night sky, so bright it looked like a searchlight.
Reading Time: 3 minutes A story about a society in which a mechanism was invented to increase pleasant dreams. Old men prefer to sleep unawakened rather than live. One man tries to resist.
Reading Time: 3 minutes Gwen examined the table so she didn’t have to meet the impatient eyes of the family members. Had one of these cups of tea held the poison responsible for the corpse lying beside an overturned chair at the head of the table?
Reading Time: 5 minutes While burning barrels light the state capital’s torn paint and hunger pains ravage his stomach, a man looks into a mirror, seeing what he could become and reliving what he had to do to survive.
