Original

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.

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.

The Roommate

Reading Time: 4 minutes The hole in my floor descended deep into the ground. Damp, mildewy air wafted up.

Everything is a Rocket Ship

Reading Time: 3 minutes There’s something I never told you, but I think you’re old enough now to know. I have a magic inside me. It lives between the lines in my fingertips and changes what I touch so I can fly away to a world far less frightening.

Tik Tok Man

Reading Time: 3 minutes The five second burst of sound cycled over and over, breaking against his thoughts like waves against a levy, overwhelming him, washing him away.

The Falls of Imoletta

Reading Time: 4 minutes One can spend an entire lifetime searching for something, only to find it lies just beyond your grasp – and your lifetime has vanished in the blink of an eye.

Trapper

Reading Time: 2 minutes Jenny hangs the traps every sunset. She measures the string against her arm and wraps it twice around each jar tied with a double knot. She hangs them from the strongest branches of the big dead oak on Hangman’s Hill.

Lighthouse In The Desert

Reading Time: 4 minutes There is something special about desert at night: A dark-grey sea of emptiness stretched before us, with nothing but sand dunes and tall, sharp rocks for miles around. If we watched closely, we’d see it was crawling with life, with snakes, scorpions, and other little nightmares, but I kept my eyes on the road, and the hitchhiker – Joey – stared at the sky.

The Mascareri

Reading Time: 3 minutes The oldest mask shop in Venice has a mask for everything, and the owner will take whatever you have to offer.

Universal Story

Reading Time: 4 minutes When I mentioned the Kintoc spring tale of relocating entire lakes using braided ropes, a herd of elk and sub-zero temperatures, I didn’t consider that I might soon be living all of it.

Out Here

Reading Time: 3 minutes A century ago, a question blossomed in our awareness that has tormented each subsequent generation’s brightest scientific minds. Since other intelligent life must be out there in a universe so vast, why haven’t they found us yet?

Grave Concerns

Reading Time: 4 minutes “My name is Calder Freeman. I am the head arcanist at GraveSecure.” He said it casually, like someone offhandedly mentioning they were a garbageman or an accountant, not an honest-to-God necromancer.

Amelia’s Appliances

Reading Time: 4 minutes As William ambles into the kitchen to retrieve his morning coffee, he slips on a patch of melted ice. When he falls on his back, the dishwasher swings its door open and smacks him on the head.

Please Hold

Reading Time: 4 minutes Brother Gregor bent close to his work, his hands trembling as he lifted the taper. Candlelight flickered in the gloom; incense sticks pierced the fetid air. A drab grey light trickled through the tiny windows, illuminating the chalk circle drawn across the floorboards.

The Box

Reading Time: 3 minutes I found it in the usual place, where I always find them. Under the rock. “Hello,” I said.  “What’s your name, little feller?” No answer. But I expected that. 

Spiral Woman

Reading Time: 3 minutes Inspired by both the art of Louise Bourgeois and a news story about a sex-bot repairman, “Spiral Woman” gives a kind of agency to a member of the already-marginalized servant class of the future.

The Dark Constellation

Reading Time: 3 minutes I haven’t seen what the world is running from, and my father won’t tell me. But I have heard what they say in the village. The monsters came from the sky to live in our oceans.

William’s Legacy

Reading Time: 4 minutes A hayride with an old friend from the past unveils uncomfortable truths for Max and his family.

Twinkle

Reading Time: 2 minutes A band of faeries endeavors to help a worthy little girl by doggedly placing wish opportunities in her path.

House Keepers

Reading Time: 3 minutes When civilization begins to crumble, the 1 percent retreat to their summer homes.

The Old Storms

Reading Time: 3 minutes The old storms have gone away, and a little wonder has gone out of the world with them. Can they be brought back?

A New Home

Reading Time: 3 minutes What makes a house a home? In the future, we might not have to be the ones who decide that.

Concerto

Reading Time: 4 minutes A haunted musician is compelled to make music for creatures he finds in the shadows…

Bellatrification

Reading Time: 4 minutes In a society where everybody is beautiful, physical imperfection becomes a career move.

Second Bite

Reading Time: 4 minutes A dentist with a dark family history receives a request to fit a patient with a very unique set of teeth.