Deadbolt
Reading Time: 13 minutesJess thought she’d left Derek behind, casting away his ring in the floods of a Seattle storm. But Derek was promised forever, and with another storm brewing, he’s going to remind her just how long forever is.
Fiction
Rainbow Sprout
Reading Time: 4 minutesStupid 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?
10207
Reading Time: 6 minutesProbably nothing bad happens after you donate your body to science, right?
Flowers for Humanity
Reading Time: 4 minutesA 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 minutesOn a dead planet, two prospector friends find two huge statues with a secret.
The Last Thing Taken
Reading Time: 9 minutesWhen Sophia meets Oloku, she thinks it’s the perfect, strings-free affair. But when she learns his secret, she finds there’s a price to pay for loving him.
Gentle Autumn Rain
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe 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 minutesA dedicated officer refuses to leave until others are safe. Death sometimes does not defer duty.
Magic Makes Fools of Us All
Reading Time: 4 minutesAn unusual family plots a summer camping trip that will satiate their blood-lust. It doesn’t go entirely as planned.
The Ways We Played the Game
Reading Time: 6 minutesA LitRPG jam in Singapore, with a code that really works for those that want to try it.
The Burning Point of a Soul
Reading Time: 4 minutesHow do I discover what my soul burns for? Do I even want to find it?
Fingal’s Cave
Reading Time: 17 minutesA rogue scientist’s intrepid search for life becomes a metaphoric and existential journey of the heart that explores how we connect and communicate—with one another and the universe—a journey intimately connected with water.
Dragon Dancer
Reading Time: 4 minutesEvery 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.
Behind the Standing Stones
Reading Time: 4 minutesCraig and Hailey had very different ideas about how to celebrate their anniversary. One wanted sunshine and drinks on an island beach. The other was more interested in the enchantments that might be found beyond the standing stones.
The Last Time I Saw the Yellow Skies of Venus
Reading Time: 5 minutesTerraforming 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.
Follow Me
Reading Time: 21 minutesWhen Influencer Jan Pham downloads an app from the dark web that promises fame, fortune, and – most importantly – more followers, she gets more than she bargained for.
A Sampling of Seven Dragons
Reading Time: 4 minutesBefore 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
Snail’s Pace
Reading Time: 6 minutesBecoming the tutor of an alien on a ship sounds like the perfect answer to Susannah’s problem — she’s orphaned, alone, and penniless in Hong Kong in 1884. What she doesn’t know is that the alien is not Chinese, and the ship is not on an ocean. When she finds her new charge is from another planet.
Ashes
Reading Time: 17 minutesThirty years after the Burn, Jackson, an aging ex-soldier, is just trying to survive. A moral person in a world where morality isn’t a particularly good survival trait, Jackson has to choose between his self-interest and doing what’s right.
The Update
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen 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 minutesAn obsessed tooth fairy finds a new way to collect now that their favorite child is all grown up.
The Mistaken Haunting of Seth Harrison
Reading Time: 15 minutesExcerpt
Lizzie Borden took an axe.
Gave her mother forty whacks.
But did she?
Three grifters get caught up in the Lizzie Borden murders and it plays itself out one hundred years later.
It’s Not in Your Head
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhen The Soul© chip is implanted in the cerebral cortex at birth, it’s imagined it will create an immortal soul. But there are problems.
The Great Chickenomachy of Chandler County, Kentucky
Reading Time: 3 minutesSometimes, a weasel raids the henhouse. Sometimes, the hens fight back.
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RNA
Reading Time: 9 minutesWhen an aging baseball player suffers a career threatening injury, his HMO takes over. He is entitled to the lowest level of care which includes an attractive home health aid. He is crushed when she informs him that she’s not really a person.
Inuksuk
Reading Time: 17 minutesErecting a cell tower in the middle of an arctic waste–next to one of those ancient stone Inuksuks to fix location, to show scale, and to provide a little local color–would be perfect for the “We’ve got you covered” ad campaign. What could go wrong?
Small, Precious Things
Reading Time: 4 minutesWilliam is a dutiful son and a caring doctor who keeps a special collection to honor his dead mother and estranged father.
The Reality Star of Relativity
Reading Time: 4 minutesWhen 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.
I Like To Be Hit
Reading Time: 5 minutes A sentient golf ball that likes to be hit is willing to do what it must to ensure it is on the receiving end of long drives.
Reflection
Reading Time: 3 minutesI 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.
Nocturne in Black and Gold
Reading Time: 9 minutes“Nocturne in Black and Gold” exists in some poetic world outside of reality and yet—feels easily relatable. This story bypasses your flesh and bone and gets right into your soul. What happens when your doctor is a tiger?
Who Stayed in Gogol’s Overcoat
Reading Time: 4 minutesA literary creature meets her audience and must make a decision.
Living Ship
Reading Time: 13 minutesStranded when their ship was torn apart unexpectedly, the Crew of the Scorpion were lucky enough to find refuge on a nearby planet. Or were they? It turns out, the planet has a mind of it’s own.
A Dragon Looks at Four Thousand
Reading Time: 4 minutesGorelka the dragon has seen and done it all. But the future holds one more surprise.
A Clairvoyant’s Misfortune
Reading Time: 4 minutesSomeone might say: pal, since you know what’s going to happen, why don’t you do something to change your future! I can only say one thing: I did try it, many times, but there is no way to change your fate. If your life has got something in store for you, you will surely get it.
The Leviathan
Reading Time: 26 minutesA seemingly simple solution to a backyard problem quickly gets out of hand.
Glass Slipper Magic
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhat happened to Cinderella after the Prince found her? Maybe this…
Send in the Clones
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe 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.
Pantsed
Reading Time: 10 minutesKatia hopes to have a pleasant time with Ben, but when it turns out he hasn’t heard a thing she’s told him about herself, she decides to put her programming skills to good use.
A Free Man
Reading Time: 7 minutesIn a world where you can purchase a synthetic replica of a person from a vending machine, the best person to frame for a crime you committed may be … yourself.
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 minutesThe 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.
Interlude In Gehenna
Reading Time: 18 minutesHe should have killed the man when he had the chance. Now there was nothing to do but wait for retribution in a town just a shade removed from hell.
Under the Mistletoe
Reading Time: 3 minutesA creepy little trip down memory lane, suitable for inclusion in a Christmas nightmare gallery of speculative horrors and sensations.
A Voice From the Past
Reading Time: 18 minutesThe young archaeologist Edward Campbell, is obsessed with the idea of knowing what happened to his father, who died years earlier while exploring an unknown tomb he discovered in an isolated area of Egypt.
Auschwitz Dancer
Reading Time: 16 minutesThe spirit of famous Jewish ballet dancer, Franceska Mann, is stuck in time in a parallel dimension in 1943 at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland.
Dead Station: Rebellion
Reading Time: 11 minutesAn ancient horror slumbered beneath the wastelands of Titan, waiting for us to find it – and now we have. Contact has been lost with the outer mining colonies and an emergency recovery team mobilized. They expected the miners to be dead. What they find is far worse.