Fractures Like Windows and Time
Reading Time: 8 minutesParenting is hard enough without help from the multiverse.
Short Stories
Out of the Darkness
Reading Time: 4 minutesA young girl, desperate to find her beloved pet, ventures out into the darkness.
Neighbors
Reading Time: 4 minutesBeing neighborly isn’t always easy. Morgred has to hold her tongue while her daughter makes other plans.
DC
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.
A Medieval Tale
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.
Past Due
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.
Whispers Of Death
Reading Time: 8 minutesA teenager pushes another teenager into an abandoned well and leaves him there to die. But the victim has other ideas.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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…
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.
A Feast for Saints
Reading Time: 4 minutesAn 18th century New England Christian tells of the terrible truth behind Thanksgiving.
Giselle and Mr. Goebbels
Reading Time: 3 minutesRoger’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 minutesIn 1921, a London painter’s encounter with a beautiful Romanian woman leads to a portrait sitting with hellish consequences.
I Know Who Killed Natalie Roane
Reading Time: 6 minutesHorror meets the near-term sci fi of additive manufacturing in a ghost story unlike most that came before it.
Chlorophylliation
Reading Time: 5 minutesColonists struggle with a strange, addictive plant that is strangling their settlement.
Deracination
Reading Time: 4 minutesLovesick 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 minutesOn a Saturday morning, Grace Merritt vomits up a pocket watch that she’s never seen before.