Short Stories

RNA

Reading Time: 9 minutes When n 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?

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 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.

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?

Living Ship

Reading Time: 13 minutes Stranded 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 Clairvoyant’s Misfortune

Reading Time: 4 minutes Someone 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 minutes A seemingly simple solution to a backyard problem quickly gets out of hand.

Pantsed

Reading Time: 10 minutes Katia 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 minutes In 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 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.

Interlude In Gehenna

Reading Time: 18 minutes He 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 minutes A 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 minutes The 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 minutes The spirit of famous Jewish ballet dancer, Franceska Mann, is stuck in time in a parallel dimension in 1943 at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland.

Giselle and Mr. Goebbels

Reading Time: 3 minutes Roger’s virtual digital assistant becomes possessed by the spirit of a vengeful ex-girlfriend who died of a broken heart. She wants to force him to dance himself to death to sixties rock music. The only one who can save Roger is the spirit of his deceased wife, Diane.

Portrait

Reading Time: 8 minutes In 1921, a London painter’s encounter with a beautiful Romanian woman leads to a portrait sitting with hellish consequences.

Chlorophylliation

Reading Time: 5 minutes Colonists struggle with a strange, addictive plant that is strangling their settlement.

Deracination

Reading Time: 4 minutes Lovesick Serena is prepared to risk everything and uproot herself completely to be with the one she loves. But are her feelings returned?

Clean Slate

Reading Time: 21 minutes On a Saturday morning, Grace Merritt vomits up a pocket watch that she’s never seen before.

Enough

Reading Time: 3 minutes This is the tale of a young photographer looking to catch her big break by capturing the perfect shot in the woods supposedly haunted by the ‘Snow Witch’.

(Image provided by Jessica Turner)

Mired

Reading Time: 5 minutes In this short historical horror, a soldier on WWI’s Western Front struggles with the enormity and guilt of having volunteered to enlist.

A Voice for the Scavengers

Reading Time: 23 minutes A government Hunter in a post apocalyptic world is challenged with either changing his allegiance or living a lie.

Night Eyes

Reading Time: 4 minutes Turner finds himself stranded in the middle of the highway late at night. As he waits for help to arrive, a strange girl appears at his car. Is she real or a ghost of his dark past?

A Substitute for Salvation

Reading Time: 23 minutes A post-apocalyptic love triangle inspired by “Casablanca” that revolves around a misanthropic bar owner, a Mars-bound clone fighting for his freedom, and a repurposed sex droid.

Those Halcyon Days

Reading Time: 4 minutes We had spent the winter together, sleeping on ice caps, pointing out constellations far above us in the sky.

In the Bowels of the Theater

Reading Time: 20 minutes There is magic in the theatre, ancient and powerful – not just of the stage, but of an elder and mighty god…one which Sucunde would see freed and restored.

Fidget

Reading Time: 3 minutes Dubious captains, drones, economies built around recycled rocket boosters, and love.

Club Fiends

Reading Time: 20 minutes The wild hunt calls, and it’s time for Ondine to depart this world, alongside her club-obsessed brothers and sisters. Yet she’s in love with a mortal – or is she? Her decision to stay or go must be made fast, for a terrible monster hunts her

Checkpoint

Reading Time: 16 minutes On a distant planet, a young alien and his human neighbor plot to escape to the paradise known as Earth.

Speed of Shadow

Reading Time: 16 minutes When a mysterious, dark figure keeps up with a family’s car at highway speeds, one little girl must inform her dad of the danger before it’s too late.

I Got Dem Ol’ Apocalypse Blues Again

Reading Time: 19 minutes Jackson, a wanna-be bounty hunter in a post-apocalyptic city, has been hired to find the people responsible for several acts of industrial sabotage. A moral person living in a city where morality isn’t a particularly good survival trait, Jackson ends up facing a crisis of conscience.

Mortimer the Maus

Reading Time: 14 minutes In “Mortimer The Maus,” Picco conveys the childhood terror of becoming lost in a large crowd, and the perils of being found by something else.

Virtually Yours

Reading Time: 12 minutes In a world of seamless surveillance where virtual and real coalesce in a teasing dance, love is the trickster