Reading Time: 4 minutesAfter 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?
Reading Time: 11 minutes2,000 feet below the surface, are they the observers? Or the observed?
Reading Time: 19 minutesWhen a bioengineered “weapon” goes feral, a kill team is dispatched to retire it.
Reading Time: 16 minutesBrother Silas is unhappy with his lot at the abbey. He sees no alternative until a unique manuscript comes his way.
Reading Time: 11 minutesA 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.
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe holidays take on an ominous tone when a woman receives a phone call from the son she murdered.
Reading Time: 8 minutesWhen 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.
Reading Time: 9 minutesA 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?
Reading Time: 8 minutesParenting is hard enough without help from the multiverse.
Reading Time: 2 minutesMaybe the meaning of life won’t be found among the digits of pi, but life can still depend on them.
Reading Time: 2 minutesHer child was now grown, but a fairy godmother’s job was never over.
Reading Time: 4 minutesA young girl, desperate to find her beloved pet, ventures out into the darkness.
Reading Time: 4 minutesBeing neighborly isn’t always easy. Morgred has to hold her tongue while her daughter makes other plans.
Reading Time: 12 minutesIn the aftermath of the Hives invasion of earth, the society of the old world was shattered, and in response to the possibility of the aliens return, the authoritative Collective took hold of the sphere. Alexander King, a loyal soldier of the Collective, discovers that the Hive’s presence is stronger than commonly believed, and that its secrets may be far too powerful for any military effort.
Reading Time: 4 minutesOlia is woken by the deep unearthly booms and sharp percussive snaps of the ice breaking up. She lies still in her bed, listening. So soon. She thought she would have more time. Another month, at least. But things aren’t like they were when she first became Tribute Keeper. They’ll be different still for Vali
Reading Time: 11 minutesA 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.
Reading Time: 14 minutesA monk in a medieval priory faces the sudden appearance of aliens that seem strangely familiar, only to learn he was once one of them.
Reading Time: 4 minutesDavis was the species’ third victim on the Pathfinder XII. I liked Davis, he called me a Culinary Magician.
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn a world where holograms allow us to hang on even past death, a young man needs to make a hard choice.
Reading Time: 3 minutesOld people don’t die, but slowly turn to stone. Joey needs to get her Nana to her grandfather’s statue.
Reading Time: 8 minutesA teenager pushes another teenager into an abandoned well and leaves him there to die. But the victim has other ideas.
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.
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?
Reading Time: 6 minutesProbably nothing bad happens after you donate your body to science, right?
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.
Reading Time: 4 minutesOn a dead planet, two prospector friends find two huge statues with a secret.
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.
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.
Reading Time: 4 minutesA dedicated officer refuses to leave until others are safe. Death sometimes does not defer duty.
Reading Time: 4 minutesAn unusual family plots a summer camping trip that will satiate their blood-lust. It doesn’t go entirely as planned.
Reading Time: 6 minutesA LitRPG jam in Singapore, with a code that really works for those that want to try it.
Reading Time: 4 minutesHow do I discover what my soul burns for? Do I even want to find it?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Reading Time: 2 minutesAn obsessed tooth fairy finds a new way to collect now that their favorite child is all grown up.
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.
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.
Reading Time: 3 minutesSometimes, a weasel raids the henhouse. Sometimes, the hens fight back.
The Great Chickenomachy of Chandler County, Kentucky Read More »
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.
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?
