Goulash for a Ghoul
Reading Time: 5 minutes A fractured fable and a meal served up in a haunted castle.
Reprint
Table 19
Reading Time: 17 minutes A woman tries to intervene with the fate of a young barista, but fate will not be cheated.
Clowns In The Woods
Reading Time: 31 minutes An anxious young man gets more than he bargained for when he accompanies his fiance’s family on a hunting trip.
333 Years
Reading Time: 4 minutes Here we have an unexpected intersection of past and present when Fate takes a hand to things up.
The Wellington Methodology
Reading Time: 10 minutes Science fiction meets gothic in this story of a groundbreaking discovery gone wrong, and the horrifying fall of the titular scientist.
Betty And The Demon
Reading Time: 17 minutes Irish-born Father Donahey has been retired to Winterset, Iowa after many years of service as a Catholic Priest in South America. He finds something quite different from the life of books and long rural walks that he expects. The community is awash with supernatural creatures, some friendly, many decidedly not. From selkies and pookas of Irish mythology to pixies, demons, and shape-shifters, Father Donahey must deal with them all to protect his new parish, and the world at large from chaos and destruction.
In this story, a rich computer designer who recently moved from Silicon Valley demands his help in exorcising a demon from his sentient AI, before the evil creature uses the facilities of the supercomputer to rain destruction on the world. Computer geek, priest, and two disabled military veterans fight their way into the computer facility to either send the demon back to hell or to destroy the AI.
Come the Waters High
Reading Time: 4 minutes A flash fantasy story about a High Priestess who must deal with rising tides that threaten to drown her people.
She Kept the House
Reading Time: 3 minutes In this spooky flash story, a woman haunts her own house after a messy breakup.
From Below
Reading Time: 15 minutes In the aftermath of a climate apocalypse, Jeremy and Alex survive by supplying food to the wealthy people living above the water, in the penthouses of Old Manhattan. But the wealthy aren’t the only ones that are hungry.
My Brain Through Your Brain
Reading Time: 5 minutes When Katie’s brain seems to jump out of sync she discovers another, almost identical, mind living inside her own. This duplicate mind gradually is not what she seems but instead something far more dangerous.
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?
SEALAB IV
Reading Time: 11 minutes 2,000 feet below the surface, are they the observers? Or the observed?
And Water’d Heaven With Their Tears
Reading Time: 19 minutes When a bioengineered “weapon” goes feral, a kill team is dispatched to retire it.
The Scrivener
Reading Time: 16 minutes Brother Silas is unhappy with his lot at the abbey. He sees no alternative until a unique manuscript comes his way.
Skins
Reading Time: 11 minutes A remote cabin in the southwest desert is the scene of an alien invasion, but it’s not what you think. Maybe the ghost hunters have it wrong.
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.
Nuked
Reading Time: 8 minutes When a dead scientist calls a city paper to report a nuclear accident, the night reporter goes out to investigate. What he finds is completely alien.
Phantom
Reading Time: 9 minutes A little boy sees the ghost of an old man in the mirror. Or is it the old man who sees the ghost of a small boy?
Fractures Like Windows and Time
Reading Time: 8 minutes Parenting is hard enough without help from the multiverse.
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.
DC
Reading Time: 11 minutes A higher power watches a small group of primitive humans in the far future try to understand the alarms triggered by their presence in a long-abandoned city.
A Medieval Tale
Reading Time: 14 minutes A monk in a medieval priory faces the sudden appearance of aliens that seem strangely familiar, only to learn he was once one of them.
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.
Whispers Of Death
Reading Time: 8 minutes A teenager pushes another teenager into an abandoned well and leaves him there to die. But the victim has other ideas.
Deadbolt
Reading Time: 13 minutes Jess 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.
10207
Reading Time: 6 minutes Probably nothing bad happens after you donate your body to science, right?
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.
The Last Thing Taken
Reading Time: 9 minutes When 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.
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 Ways We Played the Game
Reading Time: 6 minutes A LitRPG jam in Singapore, with a code that really works for those that want to try it.
Fingal’s Cave
Reading Time: 17 minutes A 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.
Behind the Standing Stones
Reading Time: 4 minutes Craig 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.
Follow Me
Reading Time: 21 minutes When 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.
Ashes
Reading Time: 17 minutes Thirty 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 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.
It’s Not in Your Head
Reading Time: 2 minutes When The Soul© chip is implanted in the cerebral cortex at birth, it’s imagined it will create an immortal soul. But there are problems.
RNA
Reading Time: 9 minutes When 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 minutes Erecting 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?