It Shambles Closer in the Dark
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn the dark, something shambles toward you, its squelch squelch squelch sound getting louder, and louder. Is it here for you?
Short Stories
Not Alone in the Universe
Reading Time: 3 minutesSome expected the aliens to solve the problems of humanity, while others were afraid of genocide or enslavement. But it all turned out differently.
Terra Forma
Reading Time: 11 minutesMirabyi has been tapped to join the moon colony to explore the possibility of converting the dusty surface to life sustaining soil. Her experiments have unexpected results and maybe not the good kind.
Demonology
Reading Time: 3 minutesWith his life spiraling out of control, and a desire for revenge taking over his mind, a man takes drastic actions.
The Faster They Eat Her
Reading Time: 26 minutesYoung Daisy must evade the clutches of forest-dwelling witch Madame Sosostris and Malcolm, the town brute, as she tries to solve the mystery of her friend Violet’s disappearance.
The Imaginary Librarian
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn a sparse, orderly imaginary office, a librarian awaits unseen directives, tending to imaginary tomes with quiet diligence. As dawn approaches, she fulfills a final task, providing closure for a life departing.
A Darker World
Reading Time: 6 minutesTechnology allows us to revisit the most cherished moments of our lives. But is that a good thing?
The Fool’s Fiddle
Reading Time: 18 minutesDragons can’t lie, right? That’s what the legends say. So, when Guy finds himself at the wrong end of a failed heist, he puts that knowledge to the test. Compatriots dead. Hope gone. And his last chance at life is convincing a dragon to let him go.
Willow Prentiss
Reading Time: 5 minutesGuilt, melancholy, and the lost soul of a love form the basis of this twist on the paranormal/magical romance.
The Wreck of the Lorelei
Reading Time: 21 minutesTrapped in an experiment in faster-than-light space travel, the captain of the ship searches for what went wrong.
Freedreamers
Reading Time: 18 minutesIn the future, our dreams are mass entertainment … or a weapon of mass destruction.
Confederate Cavalry on a Plane
Reading Time: 15 minutesA physics professor and his student on a plane argue about the possibility of infinite alternate universes, while being robbed blind by a bratty kid. The professor bets the student that even the most unlikely event possible must happen, leading to three very confused Confederate Cavalry charging down the aisle.
Home Delivery
Reading Time: 10 minutesDesperate for cash, Nick and his friend plot a home invasion. They picked the wrong house.
Affordable Resurrection
Reading Time: 6 minutesLightly amusing modern-feel fantasy mashup about an unlikely partnership between a budget-price necromancer and his student locked in an unusual business model.
Why the Sea is Boiling Hot
Reading Time: 21 minutesA serial killer is playing havoc in the city-state of Sheebatiya. Can Allii uncover the killer before fear pushes the city into anarchy?
Naughty or Nice?
Reading Time: 5 minutesA vampire, attempting to adapt to Western customs, sends her Christmas list to Santa.
Timestealer
Reading Time: 6 minutesTimestealing is an art. And a business. And a service. A good timestealer can predict what the next best-seller will be – most of the time.
Half-baked Hero
Reading Time: 16 minutesWhen Janza, a bodyguard-for-hire meets a suspicious merchant, her personal code and memories of the oppression suffered by her people battle for her soul.
Counterfeit
Reading Time: 4 minutesA quick collision of rich space junk collectors, and an expert counterfeiter.
Thumbing to Sugar Daddy Oberon
Reading Time: 10 minutesIn spite of interfering adults, a spoiled child is determined to claim her birthright in the court of Oberon and Titania.
The Visitation
Reading Time: 8 minutesA secret government organization is fighting an unknown, but strange enemy.
Robin’s Last Song
Reading Time: 21 minutesAfter her technological tool failed to warn the world of the sudden loss of birds on the planet, a self-exiled blind elder who has Aspergers and suffers from dysphonia, finds new hope in the field of soundscape ecology.
Take Away The Tears
Reading Time: 4 minutesConscripted Lieutenant Lovemore Vulgaris has been instructed to design the people of the future, and he’s not messing around.
Harvesting Souls
Reading Time: 10 minutesA young woman faces her vengeful parents returning from the dead.
Bed Bugs
Reading Time: 10 minutesA couple unknowingly house a blood-sucking parasite under their bed.
Eight Legs Under Moonlight
Reading Time: 12 minutesIn a Victorian town plagued by werespiders, a curious spinster takes in a mysterious woman.
One Winter Night
Reading Time: 5 minutesA young girl, determined to catch Santa in the act, waits impatiently with a list of her own.
What We Hold On To
Reading Time: 13 minutesA mother and her young daughter fight to survive in a world ravaged by an ongoing world war between megacorporations.
The Nocturnality of Dorian Salva
Reading Time: 17 minutesDorian Salva is an artist with a consuming passion for birds. One night, his work-in-progress takes on an eerie life of its own, and the relationship between artist and subject, painter and painted, undergoes an uncanny reversal.
Goulash for a Ghoul
Reading Time: 5 minutesA fractured fable and a meal served up in a haunted castle.
Table 19
Reading Time: 17 minutesA woman tries to intervene with the fate of a young barista, but fate will not be cheated.
Clowns In The Woods
Reading Time: 31 minutesAn 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 minutesHere we have an unexpected intersection of past and present when Fate takes a hand to switch things up.
The Wellington Methodology
Reading Time: 10 minutesScience 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 minutesWhen Irish-born Father Donahey retires to Winterset, he finds the community is awash with supernatural creatures, some friendly, many decidedly not.
Come the Waters High
Reading Time: 4 minutesA flash fantasy story about a High Priestess who must deal with rising tides that threaten to drown her people.
Control Alt Delete
Reading Time: 21 minutesBen is reveling in his tragically achieved freedom. He thinks he has it made, except for an elusive partner. Then an unknown woman first DMs then stands him up. His troubles have only begun when he realizes how thoroughly someone has infiltrated his technological fortress.
From Below
Reading Time: 15 minutesIn 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 minutesWhen 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 minutesWhen old Ms. Linton rescues a wounded magpie, memories of her past come winging back.
Compost
Reading Time: 4 minutesA mother, desperate to feed her young son, takes a risk that doesn’t pay off.
Silent at the Mouth
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?
SEALAB IV
Reading Time: 11 minutes2,000 feet below the surface, are they the observers? Or the observed?