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. 

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?

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

(Image provided by Jessica Turner)

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.

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.