A Visit from the Tooth Fairy
Reading Time: 2 minutes An obsessed tooth fairy finds a new way to collect now that their favorite child is all grown up.
Fiction
The Mistaken Haunting of Seth Harrison
Reading Time: 15 minutes Excerpt
Lizzie Borden took an axe.
Gave her mother forty whacks.
But did she?
Three grifters get caught up in the Lizzie Borden murders and it plays itself out one hundred years later.
It’s Not in Your Head
Reading Time: 2 minutes When The Soul© chip is implanted in the cerebral cortex at birth, it’s imagined it will create an immortal soul. But there are problems.
The Great Chickenomachy of Chandler County, Kentucky
Reading Time: 3 minutes Sometimes, a weasel raids the henhouse. Sometimes, the hens fight back.
RNA
Reading Time: 9 minutes When an aging baseball player suffers a career threatening injury, his HMO takes over. He is entitled to the lowest level of care which includes an attractive home health aid. He is crushed when she informs him that she’s not really a person.
Inuksuk
Reading Time: 17 minutes Erecting a cell tower in the middle of an arctic waste–next to one of those ancient stone Inuksuks to fix location, to show scale, and to provide a little local color–would be perfect for the “We’ve got you covered” ad campaign. What could go wrong?
Small, Precious Things
Reading Time: 4 minutes William is a dutiful son and a caring doctor who keeps a special collection to honor his dead mother and estranged father.
The Reality Star of Relativity
Reading Time: 4 minutes When the Helikon requires a young, fresh face, to keep the people back on earth interested during its long interstellar voyage, who better than Reality Star LaVi Elphan? Though there are some surprises in store, for her, and the PR agent who sends her.
I Like To Be Hit
Reading Time: 5 minutes A sentient golf ball that likes to be hit is willing to do what it must to ensure it is on the receiving end of long drives.
Reflection
Reading Time: 3 minutes I find your heart on Europa, and for a moment it is mine. I follow the signature of your thoughts, and it leads me far above the galactic plane.
Nocturne in Black and Gold
Reading Time: 9 minutes “Nocturne in Black and Gold” exists in some poetic world outside of reality and yet—feels easily relatable. This story bypasses your flesh and bone and gets right into your soul. What happens when your doctor is a tiger?
Who Stayed in Gogol’s Overcoat
Reading Time: 4 minutes A literary creature meets her audience and must make a decision.
Living Ship
Reading Time: 13 minutes Stranded when their ship was torn apart unexpectedly, the Crew of the Scorpion were lucky enough to find refuge on a nearby planet. Or were they? It turns out, the planet has a mind of it’s own.
A Dragon Looks at Four Thousand
Reading Time: 4 minutes Gorelka the dragon has seen and done it all. But the future holds one more surprise.
A Clairvoyant’s Misfortune
Reading Time: 4 minutes Someone might say: pal, since you know what’s going to happen, why don’t you do something to change your future! I can only say one thing: I did try it, many times, but there is no way to change your fate. If your life has got something in store for you, you will surely get it.
The Leviathan
Reading Time: 26 minutes A seemingly simple solution to a backyard problem quickly gets out of hand.
Glass Slipper Magic
Reading Time: 3 minutes What happened to Cinderella after the Prince found her? Maybe this…
Send in the Clones
Reading Time: 4 minutes The victim’s head had been blown clean off, that much was obvious. The body lay on a table in the morgue, the harsh scent of antiseptic trying and failing to cover the rusty smell. I looked over at my partner, Wolf-776f6c66 and sighed. “Why am I here?”
There wasn’t much crime on Callisto Colony, and what there was tended to be pretty minor. Vandalism, drunk and disorderly, sometimes a domestic disturbance. All in a day’s work for me, the only full detective on the colony. A corpse was unusual, true, but this case? Open and shut.
Pantsed
Reading Time: 10 minutes Katia hopes to have a pleasant time with Ben, but when it turns out he hasn’t heard a thing she’s told him about herself, she decides to put her programming skills to good use.
A Free Man
Reading Time: 7 minutes In a world where you can purchase a synthetic replica of a person from a vending machine, the best person to frame for a crime you committed may be … yourself.
Revelations
Reading Time: 5 minutes “Everyone looks to the sky with mixed feelings, some welcoming of the arrival of Others, some dreading it. How we behave in that moment of revelation will speak volumes to those who need merely wait and watch, to know all they need to—about us.”
Bob and Big Dave
Reading Time: 4 minutes The sudden appearance of the ghost of Bob, Dave’s best friend, leaves the latter feeling unhinged. Dave has just lost his wife, and Bob has returned to prevent Dave from following after her.
Interlude In Gehenna
Reading Time: 18 minutes He should have killed the man when he had the chance. Now there was nothing to do but wait for retribution in a town just a shade removed from hell.
Under the Mistletoe
Reading Time: 3 minutes A creepy little trip down memory lane, suitable for inclusion in a Christmas nightmare gallery of speculative horrors and sensations.
A Voice From the Past
Reading Time: 18 minutes The young archaeologist Edward Campbell, is obsessed with the idea of knowing what happened to his father, who died years earlier while exploring an unknown tomb he discovered in an isolated area of Egypt.
Auschwitz Dancer
Reading Time: 16 minutes The spirit of famous Jewish ballet dancer, Franceska Mann, is stuck in time in a parallel dimension in 1943 at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland.
Dead Station: Rebellion
Reading Time: 11 minutes An ancient horror slumbered beneath the wastelands of Titan, waiting for us to find it – and now we have. Contact has been lost with the outer mining colonies and an emergency recovery team mobilized. They expected the miners to be dead. What they find is far worse.
A Feast for Saints
Reading Time: 4 minutes An 18th century New England Christian tells of the terrible truth behind Thanksgiving.
Giselle and Mr. Goebbels
Reading Time: 3 minutes Roger’s virtual digital assistant becomes possessed by the spirit of a vengeful ex-girlfriend who died of a broken heart. She wants to force him to dance himself to death to sixties rock music. The only one who can save Roger is the spirit of his deceased wife, Diane.
Portrait
Reading Time: 8 minutes In 1921, a London painter’s encounter with a beautiful Romanian woman leads to a portrait sitting with hellish consequences.
I Know Who Killed Natalie Roane
Reading Time: 6 minutes Horror meets the near-term sci fi of additive manufacturing in a ghost story unlike most that came before it.
Chlorophylliation
Reading Time: 5 minutes Colonists struggle with a strange, addictive plant that is strangling their settlement.
For Warmth and Trinkets
Reading Time: 4 minutes Brrr’s investigation reveal his ice planet is losing cold and fledglings because of bureaucrats chasing profit with human aliens.
Deracination
Reading Time: 4 minutes Lovesick Serena is prepared to risk everything and uproot herself completely to be with the one she loves. But are her feelings returned?
Clean Slate
Reading Time: 21 minutes On a Saturday morning, Grace Merritt vomits up a pocket watch that she’s never seen before.
Occupational Hazards or The Quite Curious Tale of Astridr Grimsdottir
Reading Time: 5 minutes Working to a deadline can sometimes lead to astonishing conversations, even revelations. Does the artist dictate the art? Or the art the artist?
Enough
Reading Time: 3 minutes This is the tale of a young photographer looking to catch her big break by capturing the perfect shot in the woods supposedly haunted by the ‘Snow Witch’.
Mired
Reading Time: 5 minutes In this short historical horror, a soldier on WWI’s Western Front struggles with the enormity and guilt of having volunteered to enlist.
A Voice for the Scavengers
Reading Time: 23 minutes A government Hunter in a post apocalyptic world is challenged with either changing his allegiance or living a lie.
Hermit Crabs
Reading Time: 4 minutes An unusual being is on a quest to find the perfect birthday gift for their lover. The tricky part is, they must leapfrog across several human bodies to get there.
Night Eyes
Reading Time: 4 minutes Turner finds himself stranded in the middle of the highway late at night. As he waits for help to arrive, a strange girl appears at his car. Is she real or a ghost of his dark past?
A Substitute for Salvation
Reading Time: 23 minutes A post-apocalyptic love triangle inspired by “Casablanca” that revolves around a misanthropic bar owner, a Mars-bound clone fighting for his freedom, and a repurposed sex droid.
Those Halcyon Days
Reading Time: 4 minutes We had spent the winter together, sleeping on ice caps, pointing out constellations far above us in the sky.
The Belly of The Beast
Reading Time: 23 minutes When nothing is as it seems, how much are you willing to sacrifice to save mankind…
Stump Kid
Reading Time: 4 minutes A tween makes a deal with the local urban legend to ensure that his final Halloween Trick-or-Treating goes according to plan.