Papa’s (Not) Gone
Reading Time: 4 minutes “What’s mechanical, Papa?” I asked.
“What you said. The neurons,” he replied.
Neurons? Then I remembered.
Flash Fiction
The Largest Pub in London
Reading Time: 4 minutes Marco backs away until he hits a door. He reaches behind him, turns the handle, and falls into the room. The door swings shut. He backs away, waiting for Big Bob to come through it, running through the best next words to choose.
Her Night Off
Reading Time: 4 minutes After a chance encounter and a night of passion in Manhattan, a woman must choose between her responsibility and her heart.
The Umbrellas We Brought to the Future
Reading Time: 4 minutes “Sorry it’s not sunny.” Amar shrugs. “Rainy days are the best for time travel.”
And the Fires Burned
Reading Time: 4 minutes The town of Boyerville is covered in smoke from a nearby fire. Officially, the fire was started by accident, but the townspeople suspect otherwise.
Young Buck
Reading Time: 5 minutes The real crook is the Company and always has been. It’s them that got reaction drives outlawed when water’s free, dammit. They only done it so we’d have to buy fusion fuel at a thousand percent markup. Most of us so-called pirates were just freelance miners that couldn’t afford the new engines.
Matchsticks
Reading Time: 3 minutes She has plenty of matchsticks at home and she is clever with crafts. She really thinks they should be more expensive—matchsticks—considering how versatile and sturdy they are. She’s thinking of the fine wooden ones with fire-red tips. This is not the first time, of course. She must be half matchsticks by now.
Goulash for a Ghoul
Reading Time: 5 minutes A fractured fable and a meal served up in a haunted castle.
Nothing About Owls
Reading Time: 2 minutes This has to be the year the bodies crest the top of the structure, because her parents are selling the cabin. They keep saying, It’s changed, it’s changed, it’s not the same. Even when she says she doesn’t care how it used to be, that she likes it now.
A Gift in Ink
Reading Time: 4 minutes When a mysterious letter written in strange disappearing ink arrives from the daughter he banished long ago for dabbling in sorcery, a father must decipher her cryptic confession before the words and his memories fade into oblivion.
She Kept the House
Reading Time: 3 minutes In this spooky flash story, a woman haunts her own house after a messy breakup.
A Possession of Magpies
Reading Time: 5 minutes When old Ms. Linton rescues a wounded magpie, memories of her past come winging back.
Compost
Reading Time: 4 minutes A mother, desperate to feed her young son, takes a risk that doesn’t pay off.
Silent at the Mouth
Reading Time: 4 minutes After an elective medical procedure, a “Blank” remains a living being, completely anonymized and freed from any visible identity. If one showed up in your life refusing to leave, would you remember who they once were and what they’d meant to you?
I’ll Be Home For Christmas
Reading Time: 2 minutes The holidays take on an ominous tone when a woman receives a phone call from the son she murdered.
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.
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.
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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.