A Sliver of Pi
Reading Time: 2 minutes Maybe the meaning of life won’t be found among the digits of pi, but life can still depend on them.
Flash Fiction
Her Solemn Duty
Reading Time: 2 minutes Her child was now grown, but a fairy godmother’s job was never over.
Out of the Darkness
Reading Time: 4 minutes A young girl, desperate to find her beloved pet, ventures out into the darkness.
Neighbors
Reading Time: 4 minutes Being neighborly isn’t always easy. Morgred has to hold her tongue while her daughter makes other plans.
Between the Mountain and the Sea
Reading Time: 4 minutes Olia is woken by the deep unearthly booms and sharp percussive snaps of the ice breaking up. She lies still in her bed, listening. So soon. She thought she would have more time. Another month, at least. But things aren’t like they were when she first became Tribute Keeper. They’ll be different still for Vali …
Chef’s Special
Reading Time: 4 minutes Davis was the species’ third victim on the Pathfinder XII. I liked Davis, he called me a Culinary Magician.
Past Due
Reading Time: 4 minutes In a world where holograms allow us to hang on even past death, a young man needs to make a hard choice.
Dead Nana, Walking
Reading Time: 3 minutes Old people don’t die, but slowly turn to stone. Joey needs to get her Nana to her grandfather’s statue.
Rainbow Sprout
Reading Time: 4 minutes Stupid car accident. Stupid sister. Stupid globetrotting, summer-consuming, plant-feeding adventure.
That’s what Mother said. “Oh, it’ll be an adventure! Just think how happy your sister will be with her sprout! She needs this now.” I get it, I’m grateful to have a working spine, but that doesn’t mean I should have to waste months trudging around… where the hell am I now? Greece?
Flowers for Humanity
Reading Time: 4 minutes A haunting tale of the Fundamental Equation of life in this Universe, and its accidental misapplication by the hidden god of the ancients.
On Our Own
Reading Time: 4 minutes On a dead planet, two prospector friends find two huge statues with a secret.
Gentle Autumn Rain
Reading Time: 4 minutes The ages have been kind and humanity has spread to the stars, but the sun’s time is growing short, and all of her children are coming home.
The Road to Vitebsk
Reading Time: 4 minutes A dedicated officer refuses to leave until others are safe. Death sometimes does not defer duty.
Magic Makes Fools of Us All
Reading Time: 4 minutes An unusual family plots a summer camping trip that will satiate their blood-lust. It doesn’t go entirely as planned.
The Burning Point of a Soul
Reading Time: 4 minutes How do I discover what my soul burns for? Do I even want to find it?
Dragon Dancer
Reading Time: 4 minutes Every year as migrating dragons pass by from across the endless sea, tradition mandates one woman jump into the thunder and dance with the wild beasts as they pass overhead. This year’s Dancer is Lanitia’s sister. The Dancer must die or arrive at The Decent; this time, something new happens.
The Last Time I Saw the Yellow Skies of Venus
Reading Time: 5 minutes Terraforming Venus is a dream come true, but what about the people who already live above the clouds, eking out a living through technology and grit? The pioneers-on-balloons are forced to relocate, leaving everything their families have built for generations.
A Sampling of Seven Dragons
Reading Time: 4 minutes Before any of the more artisanal offerings you’ll be tasting today, let us begin with a fairly traditional preparation. Yes, the one just before you, and then we’ll go round the plates widdershins from there. Anticlockwise, that is. As you take a bite, note the full-bodied ferocity, the natural balance between dread and might, that …
The Update
Reading Time: 3 minutes When an almost heavenly woman, Sister Mary, dies she expects she’ll go straight to heaven. But the stranger who shows up for her soul has a trick up his cell phone.
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.
The Great Chickenomachy of Chandler County, Kentucky
Reading Time: 3 minutes Sometimes, a weasel raids the henhouse. Sometimes, the hens fight back.
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.
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.
Who Stayed in Gogol’s Overcoat
Reading Time: 4 minutes A literary creature meets her audience and must make a decision.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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’.
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?
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.
Fidget
Reading Time: 3 minutes Dubious captains, drones, economies built around recycled rocket boosters, and love.
Dramatis Personae
Reading Time: 4 minutes A speculative riff on T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men and the lack of interpersonal connection in the modern world. This is the way the world ends: When it can’t afford to pay the supporting cast.
The Witch’s Wife
Reading Time: 4 minutes There’s a strange game the local children play in the woods, one where there are only three things you can be: the Witch, the Witch’s Wife, or Soup.
Swatted
Reading Time: 4 minutes Cara McHenry has only one chance to get a lead on her kidnapped sister, but the only ace up her sleeve is surprise . . . if she can hold her nerve.
Four Season War
Reading Time: 4 minutes The seasons pass, and recruit Charlie-7 loses himself in war.
Won’t You Stay Longer
Reading Time: 4 minutes The last two humans alive strike a deal with their mysterious caretaker.
Disgruntled
Reading Time: 4 minutes An email subscriber becomes disillusioned and frustrated with the effects of a blog’s magical advice.
I Am Forced to Write to My Neighbor About the Beast
Reading Time: 3 minutes A woman is forced to write to her neighbors about the beast she keeps secretly in her house.
Dancing A Balanced Weave
Reading Time: 4 minutes There is only a slender, fragile thread between hope and despair, happiness and fear.