Original

Reading Time: 4 minutesA literary creature meets her audience and must make a decision.

Reading Time: 4 minutesGorelka the dragon has seen and done it all. But the future holds one more surprise.

Reading Time: 4 minutesAn 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.

Reading Time: 4 minutesA tween makes a deal with the local urban legend to ensure that his final Halloween Trick-or-Treating goes according to plan.

Reading Time: 4 minutesA 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.

Reading Time: 4 minutesThere’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.

Reading Time: 4 minutesCara 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.

Reading Time: 4 minutesThe seasons pass, and recruit Charlie-7 loses himself in war.

Reading Time: 4 minutesThe last two humans alive strike a deal with their mysterious caretaker.

Reading Time: 4 minutesAn email subscriber becomes disillusioned and frustrated with the effects of a blog’s magical advice.

Reading Time: 3 minutesA woman is forced to write to her neighbors about the beast she keeps secretly in her house.

Reading Time: 4 minutesThere is only a slender, fragile thread between hope and despair, happiness and fear.

Reading Time: 4 minutesA low-level worker at a biotech company attempts to cope with the impending apocalypse.

Reading Time: 5 minutesFor the King it is love at first sight, but can love, no matter how intense and generous, be forced?

Reading Time: 4 minutesA not-quite-human entity roams the world, hoping to find true love before her kind is erased from existence.

Reading Time: 5 minutesA mother, son, and grandmother evacuate a dark, frozen planet earth but dread something even worse.

Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen you’re married to a witch don’t make empty promises or you may find yourself learning a hard lesson.

Reading Time: 4 minutesTrapped 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.

Reading Time: 5 minutesA tightly wound architect is forced to extremes when ridding her house of a man who keeps growing from the walls.

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

Reading Time: 3 minutesOnline dating can be predatory, but who exactly is doing the hunting?

Reading Time: 3 minutesThere’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.

Reading Time: 4 minutesA boy’s love for his mother helps him avoid a snare set by the Devil.

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

Reading Time: 4 minutesOne 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.

Reading Time: 4 minutesRosie O’Connell smelled only dust where once there had been life.

Reading Time: 2 minutesJenny 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.

Reading Time: 4 minutesThere 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.

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

Reading Time: 4 minutesShe flails her arms and legs against the straps that bind her to a wooden chair in the middle of the boutique.

Reading Time: 4 minutesWhen 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.

Reading Time: 3 minutesA 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?

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.

Reading Time: 4 minutesAs 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.

Reading Time: 2 minutesWe live in an old red schoolhouse in the forest. The forest is thick and woolly, and at night you can hear the wolves sing. It is safe here.

Reading Time: 4 minutesBrother 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.

Reading Time: 3 minutesI 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. 

Reading Time: 3 minutesInspired 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.

Reading Time: 4 minutesYou can change your appearance with the touch of a button. But should you?

Reading Time: 4 minutesA video game eventually progresses from virtuality to reality.

Reading Time: 3 minutesI 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.

Reading Time: 4 minutesTwo cyborgs, a woman, and a parrot, are outmatched by their deep space competitors.

Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen Maria wakes up covered in Marigolds she knows she’s dead.

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

Reading Time: 4 minutesLizzie Williams kept the head in a burlap sack. We’d pay to look at it, pay even more to hear its secrets. We hated that head.