The Great Chickenomachy of Chandler County, Kentucky
Reading Time: 3 minutes Sometimes, a weasel raids the henhouse. Sometimes, the hens fight back.
Flash Fiction
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.
A Susurrus of Plastic Wings
Reading Time: 4 minutes A low-level worker at a biotech company attempts to cope with the impending apocalypse.
The Laws of Nature
Reading Time: 4 minutes Two space prospectors, Zdenek and Sarika, encounter an unusual unknown life form in space. Due to carelessness, the first contact with it turns out to be too harsh and the situation escalates…
Ascending
Reading Time: 4 minutes Does the value of true peace transcend the means of its own achievement?
Reflections on a Loaf of Rye
Reading Time: 4 minutes Hansel and Gretel’s love of sweets began long before they met the witch in the woods.
Hotel De Mort
Reading Time: 2 minutes Most folks say death on the premises is bad for business. For Hotel de Mort, it’s life.
Hand-me-Down Days
Reading Time: 5 minutes A magical take on the pain of not fitting in, and rising above it.
Releasing Hitler
Reading Time: 4 minutes What if, one million years from now, Hitler is paroled from Hell?
Corvid King Seeks Perfect Wife
Reading Time: 5 minutes For the King it is love at first sight, but can love, no matter how intense and generous, be forced?
The Uryuom Plight
Reading Time: 3 minutes Trapped on a backward planet hundreds of light-years from home, a brave astronaut hides in plain sight among the resident aliens and laments the dying world he left behind.
For Love, I Tear
Reading Time: 4 minutes A not-quite-human entity roams the world, hoping to find true love before her kind is erased from existence.
Twinkle Twinkle
Reading Time: 5 minutes A mother, son, and grandmother evacuate a dark, frozen planet earth but dread something even worse.
Six Things you can Build with a Radish when You’re only One Inch Tall
Reading Time: 3 minutes When you’re married to a witch don’t make empty promises or you may find yourself learning a hard lesson.
Decision Tree
Reading Time: 4 minutes Trapped in a life pod attached to a dying spacecraft, an aging, battle-weary engineer has less than three minutes to live and an impossible choice to make. However, thanks to two computer programmers—over 100 years in the past—he’s not alone.
A Rational House
Reading Time: 5 minutes A tightly wound architect is forced to extremes when ridding her house of a man who keeps growing from the walls.
Before
Reading Time: 3 minutes What happens when today’s interstellar travelers meet those that arrived before them?
The Angel’s Death Knell
Reading Time: 4 minutes What happens when the Angel of Death simply gives up?
The Roommate
Reading Time: 4 minutes The hole in my floor descended deep into the ground. Damp, mildewy air wafted up.
A Taste of Online Dating
Reading Time: 3 minutes Online dating can be predatory, but who exactly is doing the hunting?