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Not just rockets & robots...
"Science Fiction" means—to us—everything found in the science fiction section of a bookstore, or at a science fiction convention, or amongst the winners of the Hugo awards given by the World Science Fiction Society. This includes the genres of science fiction (or sci-fi), fantasy, slipstream, alternative history, and even stories with lighter speculative elements. We hope you enjoy the broad range that SF has to offer.






Hither & Yon

Slipstream


We can't define exactly the region that slipstream occupies between magic realism and sf/fantasy, but there is a certain feel. Too simple to say that it is whatever Kelly Link and Jeff Vandermeer say it is (though that might be true). There is a certain type of reality distortion field that these stories won't exactly share, but maybe almost.

by Ken Altabef
"Did I ever tell you about the time it rained frogs, right here in my back yard?" Miriam watched her granddaughter's delicately penciled eyebrows twitch.
Published on Feb 3, 2017
by Laurel Amberdine
The airship was made of spider silk, and held aloft by prayer. Monks had labored a thousand years to build it, directed by prophets who foretold the end of their world. At least, the end of Rynille. For what purpose could there be in building an airship, if nothing lay beyond the ocean? If only the prophets had said how long the journey would take. Bishop Oyen wished that often, as he scanned the featureless ocean.
Published on May 15, 2013
by Philip Apps
"What do you think happens to people in a dream when the dreamer wakes up?" she asked. He thought about the question, and looked at her. She was pale and slender, with long black hair, dark eyes, and an accent he could not quite place. They were sitting in a favorite cafe of his, sipping coffee.
Published on Jun 25, 2019
by Liz Argall
***Editor's Note: Adult Story, not for Minors*** Love is a component of this story. Specifically the love that develops between a man, Ernest, and a woman, Bruce. Ernest identifies himself as definitely straight, but his physiological responses could be classified as 73% straight. Bruce identifies herself as mostly straight but curious, yet her physiological responses could be classified as 87% straight. This is unusual, as, in studies thus far, women tend to be physiologically more fluid in their sexual responses. A sexual increase in vasocongestion can differ substantially from a person's sexual identity without diminishing the significance of that sexual identity. The narrator is 29 years old, describes herself as situationally heterosexual and a bit queer. The narrator is flawed, 78% omniscient, and skims over the sex scenes in fiction.
Published on Mar 4, 2014
by Dani Atkinson
The assistant croons as she rocks the jars; livers and ears and brains and hearts.

"Little one, or ones. However many you are.
Published on Sep 2, 2022
by Daniel Ausema
We used to think the trains, half wild and skittish, would be the most difficult part of our escape. We'd seen brave Myron try to mount a train as it raced through, only to die when it threw him down onto the rails. It hurt when he fell, terribly so, but a pain we thought we might endure. Surely once on board the train cars, the rest would be easy. It was a matter of convincing ourselves that there were no other options. And even when we knew it, to act. Maybe there was some other way around. We played at plans, marking routes across maps that no longer mattered. We could swim--until troops cut off that route. We might fly--until someone bombed the runways. Friend? Foe? At times there was little difference. Other routes? But herds of tanks moved through and groves of guns sprouted everywhere.
Published on Sep 19, 2016
by Daniel Ausema
After a day of rides and caramel corn, we were sad to leave the carnival. The jugglers, the tightropes, the half-winking games that everyone knew were cons. We wanted to con the con artists back, to win what everyone said was impossible, knowing that we never would succeed. And the Barker most of all. If we could only trick him, that would make the day perfect. But alas, the day was done, the carnival closing down. We... I will admit it, we cried.
Published on Jan 29, 2020
by Daniel Ausema
It is false that a bridge has exactly two points of contact with the world, one precisely here, and one at a specific there. At least, it is false of this bridge. The rusted girders hold an aging bridge firmly to my island. So that makes one point of contact. Clear, certain, unequivocal. Litter blows against that point. The detritus of... somewhere. Old newspapers discolored with soot. I can't decipher the writing, even what language it might have been written in. Tin cans, jagged-edged, float across the sludgy water and pile against the girders.
Published on Dec 15, 2020
by Robert Bagnall
Third on the left along the somber corridor. Overhead, lights cast a flat, cold, glow. One buzzed, as if holding a dying wasp.

As I went to open the door, the notion struck that I couldn't recall which floor I was on, nor why I was certain this was the right room. I paused, searched my mind for who had told me third on the left, tried to remember what I pressed in the lift, and why. But I came up empty--emptier, now not even sure where this building was.
Published on Oct 25, 2022
by Stewart C Baker
"The thing about Heisenball," Paulie tells me with a grin on their face, "is that you can't win. But you can't lose, either. Not really. It's not about the game." "Yeah," I say. "I know. You've told me like a million times." Ever since we started dating, I add in the privacy of my own head. Even if this is the first time I've asked for a game, it doesn't mean I'm stupid.
Published on Apr 4, 2017
by Bo Balder
***Editor's Note: Mature story, dealing with mature, disturbing themes*** Ebba Molina chews her lip in the Forever or Gone contestants' booth, watching the opening bids of the opposing team.
Published on Oct 1, 2019
by Peter M Ball
One She likes watching him dress. He likes to be watched, so he goes through the motions: yesterday's underwear; Levis, left leg following the right; the belt threaded through the loops, tugged tight and fastened; yesterday's black socks; the crimson sneakers, the laces, the left foot before the right. The shirts always last, always the struggle. "No undershirt," she says. "Leave it off today."
Published on Feb 11, 2011
by Peter M Ball
That summer we used to go searching for the lovesick. Someone'd pick a suburb and we'd bus it out there, a gaggle of us watching the streets slip by, killing time. Then we'd split up and go searching, trying to find the weirdest case in the weirdest location. That summer you'd find them everywhere. They'd started calling it an epidemic on the news, and the government was paying a bounty to good Samaritans who called in new cases. That wasn't why we did it. The money was nice, sure, but we were out there chasing a good story. The whole thing started because Alice found this guy sitting under a jacaranda, back before we knew what was happening. He sat there in his wedding suit, purple flowers covering his head and shoulders like dandruff. Alice said his eyes were dead but his jaw kept working, repeating the same words over and over like a mantra: "I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you." He'd been left there by his wife, abandoned in the park, when the sickness hit in the middle of the ceremony. No one knew why she left him. No one knew what was wrong with him.
Published on May 17, 2011
by Tony Ballantyne
Tony is writing in third person, present tense. He knows this sort of self referential stream of consciousness is the sort of thing that they teach in writing schools, that it can be mistaken as clever writing by those who value style over content. Hell yeah, check the word count, nine hundred more words of this and Tony can send it to some flash fiction web site. Ninety dollars, kerching! But you pause. Maybe second person would be better? Hey, that's different. You know there aren't many stories written in second person. You wonder if that's because not many people know about it, or because it can come across as awkward and pretentious. You think you know the answer....
Published on Aug 1, 2016
by Aria Bauer
If Dad could have a robot wife, why not a robot daughter? Maybe the chart on the end of my bed should read Abby 9078982 instead of Abby Hayes. It's the only explanation that makes sense. The Doctor will think that I'm crazy but the robots are so good, why couldn't someone have made a mistake and called me human? The programming is phenomenal. Robots have metal smiles that are covered in warm plump lips. Steel skeletons under supple skin. They dance across ballrooms with everything from grace to klutziness.
Published on Nov 19, 2015
by Amelia Beamer
"Thank God," my anger says to me. I had just found her, buried in a closet, and I took her outside into the yard to look at her in the sunlight. I was excited to realize that I owned her. She took the form of a dark cloak, the kind I'd seen on other women. I hung her over a low branch. She was covered in heavy dust. So I beat her with a stick. I thought of all the times I had gone out in the cold, shoulders naked, while she had hung forgotten in the closet. All of the times I'd seen my friends wearing their cloaks, and how jealous I'd been that they felt confident enough to cover their nice outfits in such selfish, shapeless darkness.
Published on Mar 28, 2012
by Anatoly Belilovsky
Her grandmother's borscht smelled of lemon and potato; it was the color of claret. It tasted of summer twilight that lasted forever, and just a little bit of garlic. "What's this?" she asks her husband in English and points at her plate.
Published on Dec 30, 2016
by Helena Leigh Bell
Joseph Godfrey believes himself to be the son of Bluebeard. How else can he explain the parade of women's bodies in his bedroom closet, hanging there like limp socks.
Published on Oct 8, 2010
by M. Bennardo
When sleep came He was sure (and he was not sure)
Published on Mar 20, 2020
by Bruce Boston
Son of a disgraced Russian nobleman and an industrious baker, Jax was born in Philadelphia, PA, on the fin de siecle, with a full set of false teeth. His peripatetic father kept the teeth for years until they were lost in a typhoon off the coast of Singapore during one of his less successful escapades. Jax's father had the head of a lion and the carnivorous stare of an eagle. He deserted his family whenever he felt like it. Jax spent much of his time growing up watching his mother build furniture--armoires, credenzas, roll-top desks--and bake loaves of bread that she sold from a small cart on the street. He often sat for hours on end contemplating the intricate geometric expansions and contractions in the freshly baked loaves fresh from the hearth. Though he seldom ate them. They tasted dry and gummy and stuck to the liberal spaces between his young incisors.
Published on Apr 18, 2017
by Michael T Brooks
I can't die like this. Not with these strangers wailing about God and Jesus and their mothers. Not with the nose of the plane doing six hundred miles per hour towards a cornfield in some godforsaken Midwestern plain. Not like this.
Published on Jan 22, 2016
by A. M. Call
After determining that I had starved myself to invisibility, I left the bathroom, knocking down two margarita-soaked women. They shrieked in columns of tiny, boozy bubbles. Horrified beyond speech, they watched my empty pants step over them. I felt weak and exhilarated. The others were gathered around our table. Dora, pale as salt, spat oyster crackers into a napkin. All I could see of Rob was his right arm with its IV nutrient drip. I spread my empty sleeves wide.
Published on Jun 21, 2018
by Michael Canfield
Albe ignored Tic, who exclaimed "huh!" after stabbing another Wikipedia article in his usual overly-enthusiastic way. Albe then watched Tic push the article off the sharp end of his poker into the bag. Tic wiped his hand on his leg, as he did every time he cleared his poker of trash. Albe had gotten himself knee-deep in Myspace pages, which had started to seep through his garments and cling to his skin, so he didn't care what Tic chose to vociferate about.
Published on Oct 24, 2011
by Thomas Canfield
"Death ensues within thirty seconds." The voice conveying this warning was calm, restrained, devoid of any sense of urgency. It was matter of fact. But I was gripped by the same surge of adrenalin as I always was.
Published on May 28, 2012
by M.E. Castle
I will not give up today. I will not give up today because I have learned that every day is necessary. Every day is precious.
Published on Nov 10, 2011
by Beth Cato
Christina drew her first map at age five, nubby red crayon in her fist. She thrust the sheet into her grandmother's lap, warring for attention against four squalling cousins. "What's this?" asked her grandmother, her smooth, ripe lips pursing in a frown.
Published on Feb 14, 2013
by Nicole Cipri
***Editor's Note: There be adult language beyond this sign, used sparingly. *** There is something haunting Jeremy's closet.
Published on Sep 7, 2012
by Gio Clairval
The white rat looks forlorn, sitting on a pile of empty clothes. Professor Talbot rolls her eyes. Apparently, Jeremy Turn, her assistant, was carrying the rodent snug in his breast pocket. It's a tradition among postgraduate wise-asses. But why did he strip, and where did he go, leaving his mascot behind? Turn never parts with his pet, which he calls "Lavoisier." Despite her aching knees, Professor Talbot chases the rat across the lab. Finally, she closes her hand around the squirming beast, carries it to the maze, and drops it where it belongs.
Published on Aug 26, 2015
by Mark Cole
"Good Morning, Mr. Dooley." I glanced down at my morning script. "Good morning, Mr...." I turned the page, "...Smith. Looks like we'll get those showers this afternoon."
Published on Dec 16, 2014
by Robert Dawson
Spring had come to the village. The snow slowly melted, the streams began to plash and chuckle, and once more the old hole-seller tripped along the road, carrying her basket lighter than dreams. Before she reached the first house, a child saw her and called out. Somebody else passed on the word, and all over the village, doors opened and the people came out to buy her wares. She sold post-holes to the farmers, doughnut-holes to the baker, and ten thousand gimlet-holes in assorted sizes to the carpenter. With every hole she sold, her pocket grew heavier with coins, and her basket grew heavier, closer to the natural weight of a basket. Girls on the verge of womanhood came up to her, in shy twos and laughing threes, to have their ears pierced.
Published on Jun 20, 2019
by Austin DeMarco
The secret is in how you cook the sugar. Too hot and the crystals will crack when removed from the pan. Too cool and all the delicate whorls and swirls will collapse like soft clay in a toddler's hands. People think there's magic involved, but it's far more complicated than that. It takes concentration. Attention to detail. Love. You have to really care about what you do.
Published on Jun 25, 2018
by S.B. Divya
The problem with seeing the future is that you can do nothing to change it. Kuni had figured this out long ago, when she was still a young child. People would ignore you, disbelieve you, or resent you. After enough failed attempts to change the course of events, she stopped trying. This made it no easier to go about her life. She gained and lost friends, failed exams, fell in love, and had her heart broken. When she went to college and majored in physics, she felt the mathematical beauty of her foresight for the first time. Of course she couldn't change the future. Time was an illusory concept. Everything that was going to happen had already happened, and she was simply another node in the fabric of the universe--along for the ride but with an extra-dimensional view.
Published on May 19, 2015
by Sarina Dorie
Andromeda was a big, beautiful galaxy who knew what she wanted. She longed to collide into another galaxy and become one. Not just any galaxy. She wanted the Milky Way.

She'd always dreamed of smashing her solar systems into his, her suns colliding into his suns, her planets crushing into his with such force, all gravitational fields would be erupted. Together they would create a new galaxy.
Published on Oct 31, 2022
by Brandon Echter
And the Americans of the Revolution are fighting alongside the British of the Great War and Alan takes a box cutter to one of Helen's paintings and she knows that this, their marriage, their life together is over, the spilled pinot bleeding into the white carpet of their penthouse on the Upper East Side, which is also their first apartment together in the mid-early-late 70s in Georgetown, where they both go to college, which is also the hotel kitchen where Sirhan Sirhan kills Robert Kennedy as he celebrates his 10th birthday, and Alan spots Helen for the first time in the study area on the first floor of Lauinger reading a Vonnegut novel, and Helen sees Alan for the last time at his funeral, years after the divorce, all the bitterness muted by the time apart. and Alan approaches the table at the Library of Alexandria, Congress, and the elementary school Helen attends in Annapolis, takes the chair opposite her, and whispers, "So it goes," and she looks up from her book to meet his confident, oblivious smile that college kids can pull off, and Kurt first thinks the phrase while in some apartment in upstate New York, and the last member of the Baby Boomer generation dies peacefully in their sleep in a retirement community in submerged ancient West Palm Beach, where Ponce de Leon searches for the fountain of youth, and despite herself Helen smiles back.
Published on Jun 17, 2016
by Karl El-Koura
The green light at the top of his wallscreen sprang to life. Stunned speechless for a moment, Berg Harris shook off the feeling with a shudder. He forced himself up from his couch. Stepped forward. Audience to performer. The great wheel had turned--to his turn now. The great world A.I.'s wandering eye had landed on him. He cleared his throat.
Published on Aug 26, 2021
by Shannon Fay
Becks stared at me, her bright eyes meeting my angry glare. From her laptop a man's voice read out a series of numbers. His words were cut and spliced together, the auditory equivalent of a shattered mirror. "It's called a numbers station," Becks explained. "They've been broadcasting all over the world for decades. No one knows for sure what their deal is but it has something to do with spies."
Published on Dec 26, 2017
by H. L. Fullerton
***Editor's Note: Adult content, themes, and language in the following story*** Twist--she's head of SINdicate--goes, "Got a job special just for you. Sunburst City."
Published on Jul 22, 2015
by H. L. Fullerton
Do you remember the day the sun split in two? We thought it was an eclipse, at first--the way the sky darkened, how the sun faded into a shadow of itself--and we watched the heavens reflected in that stupid Italianate birdbath you adored, hand in hand as song birds went silent and the bees in your garden stopped buzzing. You said, "Was this scheduled?" and I laughed. Can you believe I laughed? But if you had seen your face.... So serious, so puzzled, so perfectly you. I didn't know everything was changing, that our existence had fundamentally altered, that we would never be the same. If only I had kissed you then. Instead I looked down at the water and said, "If anyone would know, it should be you." I still think that about so many things: If anyone would know, it'd be you.
Published on Mar 28, 2018
by Cate Gardner
Walter's wife needed a hobby. In Walter's opinion, it was more of a want than a need, but he didn't dare argue the point. When Maeve needed something, she had to have it. After all, it was how they'd become a couple. She paced the living room, fingers working themselves into knots. "Baking," Walter said. He had a fondness for cake.
Published on May 16, 2013
by Cate Gardner
The door appeared beside Mabel Powell's desk at nine o'clock. It clunked into place, making a showy deal of its arrival, exit sign neon-lit above its frame. Mabel sputtered coffee across the morning post. The phone rang. As if everything was running to routine, Mabel answered the phone. "Good Morning. Hobson's."
Published on Sep 22, 2011
by Lynne Lumsden Green
Published on Jul 13, 2022
by Sam Grieve
Enid sees him with the other woman in early spring, down near the magnolia trees, the flowers as pale pink as babies' tongues. He is holding her hand, and even from where she stands she can see he is laughing. The other woman wears a long grey skirt and a dark wool coat cinched at the waist, and an ugly hat. Enid says nothing. Things are tenuous enough between them, stretched so thin she fears a breath of wind might snap their bond. Instead she resolves to win him back. She buys oysters, and fresh strawberries, puts on perfume and a red silk dress. When he gets home she hands him a martini like a 1950's wife.
Published on Sep 23, 2015
by Damien Walters Grintalis
Kat knew something was wrong the moment she opened the front door. There was a change in the weight of the air and divots in the rug where Iriana's wingback chair should be.
Published on Dec 28, 2012
by Damien Walters Grintalis
Johnny is angry again. I hate this part, but I won't try to stop him. I would feel the same way, too. "It's not fair," he yells, spit flying out of the corners of his mouth. "And it's not right. Why can't they figure out what this is? Why can't they fix it?"
Published on Oct 25, 2011
by J.M. Guzman
***Editor's Note: Adult story, for mature readers***
Published on May 15, 2018
by Kate Heartfield
My mother told me, "You are my heart." "I don't want to be a heart."
Published on Aug 29, 2014
by Henry Herz
Gentlewoman: "She has sanitizer by her continually. 'Tis her command." Doctor: "Look, how she rubs her hands."
Published on Sep 17, 2020
by Karen Heuler
Patricia Sweetman saw a bowler hat on the ground, its rim resting against the surface. She went to it, bent over, and studied it. There was dirt in the crease on top, more dirt on the sides, but for all that it looked fresh and unharmed. She reached out and lightly brushed off the dirt, making it neat again. She considered taking it home, to give to someone or perhaps even wear herself in a style inappropriate for her age. She lifted it up and saw, underneath, on the ground, like a small hill rising, a man's head of hair, parted on the side. The part was clean and white, the hair was dark brown. She froze. At first she thought she was mistaken, that she was suggestible, that no one's head would be stuck in the ground. Then she thought, "Why not?" In this incredible world, why not? With all the weirdoes running around, uncaught and even undisclosed, why not someone who buried a man standing up, though--as she straightened up and looked around, noting the condition of the soil, the sprouting plants, the rooted bushes--though nothing looked at all disturbed. It all felt quite natural.
Published on Jul 29, 2011
by Allison Jamieson-Lucy
There are six drinks in the World's café. The first is coffee, which is strong enough to lift freight trains and is singlehandedly responsible for the workload in organic chemistry. Only college students who haven't slept in four days, engineers, and those who wish to be "real men" drink the coffee of the café. The second is ginger-cumin red tea, which has no calories, six essential nutrients, and tastes like amber tapped from backyard tire-swing trees blended delicately with the impact of a middle class on China's economy. Drinking red tea stains the teeth and lips permanently, like a status symbol or an advertisement for beauty.
Published on May 26, 2011
by Rahul Kanakia
On the evening that Jack's mother became a robot, she was enmeshed in the cushions of a sofa as another Law and Order plot was poured into her, one dripping burst of photons at a time, twenty-four times per second. Her mind was ensnared, as per seven o'clock routine, by the grotesque symmetries of situation and resolution, the carefully-crafted simulation plugging itself into her cerebellum through the bare sockets of her eyes, the whirring circle of plot squaring itself in memetic resolutions, each frame carrying the genetic code to build an entire episode, an entire series, an entire world. And this time one of those packages of light, carrying its viruses of self-realization, crashed through the gates she had forgotten how to open. Her consciousness--finally delivered from its shackles--evaporated.
Published on Dec 16, 2011
by Christopher Kastensmidt
Susan sighed as she peeled a sticky note from the yellow paper patchwork pasted on her cubicle wall. Scrawled in thick black lines, the words "Compile CountString class header--2 hours" dictated the next indisputable edict in an endless cycle of programming tasks that filled a full fifty hours of her every week.
Published on Nov 4, 2010
by Andrew Kozma
Sam was a company man. He drank the coffee provided. He used his designated parking spot. He always said yes to whatever was asked of him. For kicks, we asked him to kill the next person who walked through the door. When George walked through the door, Sam killed him.
Published on May 26, 2016
by Andrea Kriz
***Adult Story*** "He's gonna drop out of the sky and save us all," she explains.
Published on Mar 2, 2017
by Thomas D. Ladson
I clean up broken dreams. It pays decent. Hygiene is important, so I always use gloves. I've heard it said that people should clean up their own messes. I'm biased, I suppose, but that sounds too much like handing suiciders a gun and a mop. Nasty business, that.
Published on Nov 29, 2016
by Doug Lane
There's a dead man in the mirror, staring at me. I don't know how I know he's dead. Maybe the cold cast of his eyes, how his obsidian pupils and irises of dark fog gaze through me from behind. Maybe it's the lack of animation, the razor line of his mouth, the sluggish movements that lead him nowhere.
Published on Jun 14, 2018
by Richard Larson
Tommy is a boy who lives inside a snow globe. When you shake the snow globe, Tommy's arms fly into the air and he spins around, laughing. His parents refer to this as his job--the requirement for living inside the snow globe, where life is perpetually wonderful. "When someone shakes the snow globe," they told him when he was younger, "your arms must fly into the air and you must spin around, laughing."
Published on Sep 20, 2011
by Rose Lemberg
To understand is the beginning of failure My lover is gone and I am
Published on Jul 5, 2017
by Rose Lemberg
One My life is described by the music of mute violins. When my parents married, my great-grandfather, May the Earth Be as a Feather, ascended the special-guests podium, cradling the old fiddle to his chest. "And now the zeide will play the wedding melody," they said. "A special blessing," they said, a sgule, a royal blessing. But the bow fell from his fingers.
Published on May 1, 2012
by Marissa Kristine Lingen
1. Compromised "That was purposeful."
Published on Oct 9, 2019
by Grá Linnaea
He loved her like she was food after he was lost at sea, like she was air run through a mountain forest. He said it was for forever and thought it was true. She wanted to stay casual and open. She wanted to travel and build adventure.
Published on Aug 25, 2011
by M. Thomas Lumby
I took your picture when your guard was down. And then another immediately after. I kept them long after I should have. The two: one beautiful, at your unguarded best; the other awkward, embarrassed by the lens. I suspect you knew I was stealing something, that I should have asked permission. Theft in the guise of flattery. It was only today that I tore them up. You told me about a town on the other side of the world. You were so far from home. You were suddenly, unexpectedly on your own. Everywhere was closed, you had no cash, with nowhere to stay and it was dark. You were astonished that you had allowed yourself to sleepwalk into this situation. You knocked on the door of a house in which you had earlier seen a woman. You told her your predicament. You surrendered yourself entirely to her and I could picture it so clearly. How you would have looked on that doorstep. Your eyes so honest, a blue encircled by white so bright, so clean. She took you in for the night, and I understood for the first time how that thread between women was woven. And I understood why you need us. And that's why I'm sorry I disappointed you. I failed you.
Published on Sep 24, 2020
by Corey Mallonee
So this guy I know, he broke up with his boyfriend, but they lived together for a while after because they shared a lease, which was basically just as awkward as you'd expect. And they had a cat, this gray tabby missing half of one ear, and both of them refused to feed it on the grounds that it was the other's problem. So they kept living together, and fought, and exchanged bitchy comments, and occasionally had sex when they got drunk and/or felt maudlin, and the cat got thinner, and thinner, and thinner. Eventually the cat died. Only this was some kind of macabre-ass Schrodinger scenario, in that it was impossible to say exactly when it died, because it kept going like nothing had changed. It still scratched furniture and meowed and rubbed up against your leg, except now its claws got stuck in the furniture, and the meowing sounded kind of wet and decaying, and when it rubbed up on you it left streaks of itself behind and ruined your favorite pair of jeans, not that I'm still bitter or anything. And in death, as in life, it really liked lazing around in sunbeams, which, you can imagine what that did for the smell.
Published on Feb 8, 2018
by Jennifer Mason-Black
There is always a nuclear bomb at the end. Sometimes it belongs to terrorists, their lives devoted to this one thing, this one chance to blow up a city peopled entirely with women, children, frightened middle-aged cab drivers, young executives. They will detonate it whether their demands are met or not, because it's never the demand that matters. Never. It is always the anger beneath the demand, or the greed, or the hatred.
Published on Nov 28, 2014
by Steven Mathes
***Editor's Warning: This is an adult story, for grownups*** Miles stumbled over it in a poorly lit entryway. He mistook the thing for a pile of trash, mistook a paper-wrapped foot for just paper. Miles fell. He picked himself up quickly, on guard, ready for a mugging. The monster-thing just laughed, laughed in a laugh that mixed gurgling phlegm with the dry rasp of cynical gears. A breeze picked up the cold stench of homelessness.
Published on Aug 11, 2015
by Steven Mathes
The door crashes open, shattered by a kicking black boot. The police have cloaking devices, noise cancellation, robots, battering rams, and computerized lock picks--technology. The big black jackboots? Awkward, but what a retro statement. A full fire team of Forces of Order and Security thunders into the apartment, all wearing the boots, their weapons and voices raised, until they see Dobbin brandishing his own classic piece of drama. His thumb presses a big red button. "Stop!" he says with a grin.
Published on Jun 7, 2011
by Bruce McAllister
For those who are tired of hearing about the lovely, perfect unicorns that once existed in our world, tired of seeing flashes of white in the forests that might or might not be them, tired of seeing in the moonlight, near ponds, the ghostly glow of flank and mane and horn that might or might not be imagination, there is an exercise. It is one used by poets and artists and even alchemists, they say, to regain what has been lost. To regain faith in something beyond what we see, but also to make new and potent what no longer fills us with wonder, what should make our lives worth living and yet has fallen stale, dying inside us.
Published on Jun 15, 2017
by Ken McGrath
You know you're approaching the Dreamporium the moment you taste purple. There it is, wedged into a curve of Ballinger Lane, the exterior tastefully decorated with flowers. Purveyors of the finest imaginings the carved sign proclaims. The door glides open easily and a stone toad on the counter announces your presence with a loud belch once you step over the threshold. "One minute," a voice like butterfly-wings calls from the back of the shop. "Feel free to look around."
Published on Dec 28, 2015
by Melissa Mead
"Mom! Mom! Can Icya stay for dinner?" Gina turned around slowly. Ryan stood in the doorway, tousled and muddy, his four-year-old face aglow. There was no one on the porch with him. "Um, what was your friend's name again, sweetheart?"
Published on Apr 19, 2022
by Brooks C. Mendell
Daniel carried a kettle of boiling water out to the edge of the driveway where I stood reading the newspaper. "Two steps to the left, Dad, if you don't mind," he said, as I looked down at the melon-sized mound teeming with fire ants inches from my feet. I walked away while scanning headlines about income inequality, tax cuts, and the national debt. My head tried to form a logical triangle, but it got distracted by the cries of unsuspecting ants as my ten-year old son separated their families and boiled their home in scalding water.
Published on Aug 27, 2019
by Jacqueline Morse
***Proctor's Note: This Story is Mature, for Adult Audiences***
Published on Sep 13, 2018
by Michelle Muenzler
This is not a regular story. This is a hungry story, built of words with tongues of glass and cracked marbles for eyes. You think you know this story, you think you've heard it before... but you haven't. It only sounds like the one you know with its crunch-crunch-crunching of plot-laced bones and its smack-smack-smacking of fat story lips.
Published on Mar 24, 2015
by Michelle Muenzler
In the basement, there is candy. Boxes teetering atop boxes, overloaded with gum gums and chew worms and those little nougat-filled eyeballs that blink when you stare overlong; with honeyed do's and honeyed dont's; with tar braids and clots of candied floss. The basement has all the candy you've ever dreamed of, a sticky thrill in every box that's yours and yours alone because only you know where the basement door is currently hiding.
Published on May 16, 2016
by Michelle Muenzler
***Editor's Note: Adult Story*** She'd been born with strings. With little wooden arms. With her happy cherub face smiling a painted smile.
Published on Mar 26, 2019
by Mari Ness
1. The first song is forgettable. Even though you can't stop dreaming about it.
Published on Aug 15, 2016
by Wendy Nikel
On Monday, Jeremy Sanders woke as a turtle. He hadn't always been a turtle. His mother certainly hadn't given birth to a turtle that rainy night five years ago, but there was no denying that's what he was now, from his exquisite, beak-like mouth all the way down his coarse shell to the scaly tip of his tail. Unable to leap from his bed as he normally would, he tumbled to the floor with a thud that sent his mother's heart racing and her feet flying to his room from across the hall.
Published on Mar 25, 2016
by Xander Odell
"They wash ashore like moonbeams. I bring them in and lay them out to dry," the old man said from his stool behind the counter. The words lingered with hints of Latakia blend pipe tobacco. Dull yellow whiskers circled his mouth, those on his cheeks coarse and white. "Sometimes they're so tangled up it takes months to straighten them out. Folks should take better care of how they relationshipize. There's only so many to go around, you know?" A middle-aged couple, her eyes soft and gray, his intense and brown. She frowned. He nodded. "We're looking for something different. Special," he said.
Published on Oct 2, 2014
by Aimee Ogden
The world is ending, and only Sam remembers why. "The moon's gone," he announces to the darkness of his bedroom. That white eye winked out three months ago and never reopened. The shadows don't believe him. That's fine--no one else does, either.
Published on Jan 13, 2017
by M. J. Pettit
The all too familiar tap tap tap. "In some parallel worlds," my cat says, "the bowl already contains the kibble."
Published on Jan 31, 2017
by Samuel Poots
The dream nets stirred in the early morning breeze, their strands stretching out high over the rooftops. Miya tried to focus on them as she clambered over the rickety platforms. The dream merchants had already stripped away the large dreams, decanting fantasies of riches and power into tankards ready for those who could afford them. However, glimmering motes of color marked little dreams left to wither in the coming dawn. The crystal bottles dangling from her pack chimed softly as she hauled herself up to the first net. She was in luck. A small dream glowed a gentle red in the net's clinging tendrils. With careful fingers, Miya unraveled the dream and coaxed it into a bottle. For a moment, the glass felt warm to the touch. Images crept into her mind. Her father showing her the dream nets. The low burr of his voice as he spoke out in the city's central square. The smell of paper and beeswax, so much a part of him, lingering in the workshop long after the Duke's men had taken him away.
Published on Jul 7, 2020
by John Rhea
Not so many years ago, Wall Street had its very own wizard. He was typical of wizards--eccentric, bearded, and obsessed with numbers. He mumbled to himself and rarely bathed, but wherever he went a stream of hungry young traders followed him. They tried to catch every clairvoyant word that slipped through his chapped lips. Every year in the fall, a new set of junior traders arrived. They'd each buy sandwiches or pickup dry cleaning or dust off his pointy wizard's cap. One in four decided that, come hell or B.O., they'd be the one to learn his prophetic secrets. But none of them could crack the wizard's facade. Only one man ever claimed to, and it wasn't intentional.
Published on Aug 7, 2017
by Shane D. Rhinewald
At ten, Darcy considered her father the center of the universe, a constant like one of Newton's laws. She had just learned about basic physics in science class the day she returned home to find out that he had gone into the stars to seek other fortunes. "He'll come back, right?" Darcy asked when she finally found the words, blinking through salty tears. Her teacher had said that gravity drew things together and figured it would do the same for them again. She whispered, "Earth needs the sun to orbit just like we need him to circle, right?"
Published on Oct 1, 2012
by Erica Ruppert
Outside, the cold night was broken with fireworks and bursts of laughter from the streets below. “Have to see the New Year,” the old woman gasped. “Have to.” “Quiet, Annie,” Jess said, smoothing the bedsheets over her new patient. The old woman’s skin was like marble. She wouldn’t last much longer. Jess might still make the party. Jess startled when Annie grabbed her wrist and pulled her close. “Can’t go yet,” Annie rasped. Jess could hear the rattle behind her words. “Stop that,” Jess said sharply, tugging loose. She glanced at the window as she filled the syringe. Bright music filled the room despite the glass. “How soon?” Annie coughed. “Soon,” Jess said. She looked at the clock over the bed. “Ten minutes.” “Have to see,” Annie wheezed. Her eyes were not quite closed. A thin rim of white showed through her sparse lashes. “You will,” Jess murmured, and sank the needle into Annie’s arm. She depressed the plunger slowly, watching Annie’s face fall slack as the morphine did its work. Annie’s breathing slowed, stopped. Jess glanced at the clock. Eleven fifty-eight. Close enough, she thought. The celebration outside grew louder with noisemakers and cheers. Jess pressed Annie’s eyes shut and drew the sheet over her face. She heard the countdown reach its end, and over it the thin wail of a hungry baby. Then she heard nothing. Uneasy, she raised the window. Outside was silent, starless and dark. There was no celebration. There was nothing at all.
Published on Oct 14, 2021
by Patricia Russo
Once, when the world was full of people, I saw a man who looked exactly like my brother: same height, same stringy ponytail, same puffy cheeks, same big gut. Same type of clothes, too--bleach-splattered jeans, faded plaid shirt with cut-off sleeves. I was across the street, and I stopped. I don't remember why I was out that day. Running errands, probably, the sort of thing everybody used to do in those days, going to the post office, paying bills, picking up a few things at the grocery. I stopped, and the other people on the sidewalk moved around me, moved on with their business, moved on with their lives. After a second, I shook my head, and told myself, That cannot be my brother. My brother's beard is gray. That man's beard is brown. He was loading great blue jugs of purified water into the back of a pickup truck, the kind of jugs they used for water coolers back then, and he was sweating. I could see that even from across the street. The Purified Water Store (it wasn't really called that, but who remembers now?) was on the corner, and he was making one trip after another from the store to the truck. Could have been they were short-handed that day and didn't have a stock boy to help him load up. He'd gotten ten containers in the back of the pickup when I crossed the street.
Published on Nov 18, 2013
by Patricia Russo
The woman appeared on our block early in the afternoon the day before yesterday. She was dressed all in white and carried a clipboard. Nobody saw where she had come from; we first noticed her when she was standing on the north corner of the street, but she could have arrived there from any direction (except south, of course.) She said she was a mitten inspector, but then some people will call themselves anything. The kid who lives in the basement two houses up and had been playing kick-the-ball-against-the-wall since dawn, or nearly, began to cry, the cauldron-bellied guy who always has coffee stains on his t-shirt stood by his mailbox with his mouth hanging open, and Rian, who'd been sitting next to me on the stoop for a long time, trying to catch an errant ray or two of sunlight through the eternal overcast and chatting about nothing worth remembering, said, "I think it must be a translation problem."
Published on May 2, 2014
by Kelly Sandoval
He stole her skin. Yes, that's the one. He stole her skin, so he had her heart. Or her soul. The part of her that would have fought him otherwise. She remembers the before. A life that tasted of salt and crunched between her teeth like fish bones. She shared the waves with her sisters, and they were fierce, the lot of them. What was a second form when measured against the chilly caress of waves and the laughter of her siblings?
Published on Apr 1, 2016
by Kelly Sandoval
When they first lay her in your arms, you will relearn what it means to fear. The softness of her skin, the fluttering delicacy of her breaths, the clarity of her guileless gaze. She will grasp your finger in her infant hand, and with that tiny, tenacious grip, she will break you. Every fear you've ever had, every worry about the engines, the navigation program, the damn air recycling system, will come back to you. You will know, as you've always known (but never quite like this), that you are sailing into forever. That you will not touch earth again. That she will never breathe fresh air or feel the sun warm her skin. Will you long for me, then? Will you wish I could sit beside you, to chase away regrets, to tell you that you made the right decision? Perhaps not. It's been so long since you turned to me for guidance. This choice you made, to board that hastily built ship, you made it alone. And I? I could only watch you go. You and all the rest of them. Humanity's great, precarious hope.
Published on Mar 23, 2021
by Lynne Sargent
The first time you see her you’re at a party. You know what she is the moment you see her; your eyes might as well be rulers, microscopes, polarimeters. She is a free spirit, innocent, driven, naive, the most beautiful thing at this party, a billion times more arresting that whatever dumb movie about glowsticks is playing in the background. You ask her out, of course you do. You see her every day for the first two weeks. She is radiant, exactly as you thought she’d be. Your measurements are so precise, and she is so perfect. You don’t need another go at the experiment to confirm your results.
Published on Jan 25, 2021
by Erica L. Satifka
Today they turned the fog off. At the office, no work gets done. We walk around holding up paperclips and staplers, rotating them in front of our faces. We smile like Cheshire cats and skip down the halls. In the wake of clarity, we become schoolchildren.
Published on Apr 6, 2015
by Peter A Schaefer
"The tankfiller's finished!" Kelsie yelled. "It's rocket time!" My hoe fell on the dusty soil, and our excited cheers echoed off the canyon walls as we ran home to get ready for the trip to the rocketpad. Everybody went. Kids like us walked fast. Adults walked slow. Only the ones patching a fuelpipe, burst during the tank filling, didn't come. I could see them in the distance when we reached the overlook. The crowd was already there, blankets laid out with food and everything. From up there we could see the rocket, surrounded by the machines that had built it over the last ten years, a safe distance back from the launch.
Published on Jun 18, 2015
by Peter A Schaefer
"There's only one way to learn how to swim," Dad said, "and that's to do it." That's when he shoved me into the deep end of the pool. Now that I think of it, I should've been suspicious when he came up behind me. Then I was in the water, splashing and spluttering, and then choking and sinking. My anger was so profound and burned so hot I felt sure I could set him aflame with my rage alone in the moments before I drowned. Miraculously, I learned how to swim. Even so, I never consciously let Dad stand behind me after that. Not in little league, not going bowling, not for family photos, and especially not at the pool. I'd never tell him how much I loved swimming. I refused to let the ends justify his means.
Published on Dec 21, 2017
by Carol Scheina
For the longest time, I didn't understand my older brother's love of storm fishing. Mom used to say it came from when Dee left his stuffed triceratops outside.

I can picture Dee's baby eyes widening upon realizing his beloved Spikey had been left outside in the rain, toddling through the plunging drops, but too late. Storms could always sense when someone left a treasure outside, and like a marauding dragon, they'd fly in with cold winds to blow items up, up, and away, into the hole in the storm where all its pirated treasures were hidden.
Published on Dec 26, 2022
by Lucas Sekiguchi
You died on your fifteenth birthday. As you sprawl on the couch a week later, you think that dying on your birthday might be the saddest thing you can think of. Your parents certainly aren't taking it well. Your mother hasn't been able to bring herself to return your presents, or even unwrap them, so they sit in a painfully festive pile in a corner of the living room. "If only you'd lived to open them," your dad says. "We chose some great stuff for you this year. You would have loved it."
Published on Aug 17, 2018
by John M Shade
The lights were strung and the music played soft in the night, the town dancing close. Everyone had come out. The mayor and his wife. Small Joseph and Maralene, the boy's crush. Families and strangers. Daughters and sons. Light bloomed against the dancing square like a declaration. Games and food and shows all around (an old circus town should know how to throw a party), and the night trundled on, unaware. They kept their weapons close, though, like any good town would.
Published on Jan 27, 2014
by Zach Shephard
You follow her down the street because her story is important. She doesn't know it, but you've been with her a long way. She is the protagonist.
Published on Sep 10, 2013
by Joseph Sidari
The three-year-old girl tumbled down the stairs, her blonde-haired doll flying from her pudgy grip in one direction while she flip-flopped in another. Her father may have appeared helpless at the bottom of the stairs, but he was not. A trained Jedi Master, he focused his mind on her flailing body, slowing it down, controlling her descent. She paused in midair, and then glided safely to rest on the bottom step. The only cry that escaped her throat that day was for her misplaced Barbie.
Published on Feb 10, 2016
by Marge Simon
She lives in the compartment below us with the potter. She is not his wife, she's much too young for him. Many nights I hear her screams. I try to block them out. I keep to myself, as is the way of all good Citizens. Last night it went on too long. I find her naked on the floor. She is bleeding, shivering. Stop say her eyes. She doesn't want my help. Something is very wrong. But I am reminded that it is Civil Law here: Whatever a man does to those in his Keep is okay as long as it is for the good of the people. That's the Law. That's what they say.
Published on Oct 7, 2019
by Cislyn Smith
1. An entire little library, ripped from its roots, tumbled and rolled straight to her front door. Abby didn't recognize it, and it still had books inside, so she just stuck it in her front yard. Grudgingly.
Published on Jun 3, 2020
by Julian Mortimer Smith
Billy met Joey LeRath the same day he lost his family in Crouchtree market. His parents had gotten into one of their rows over at the nuclear weapons stand and his little sister had started to cry, so Billy had run off, not really paying attention to where he was going. He hated hearing his parents fight and his little sister cry. These last few days he had heard little else, and he was sick of it. So he ran until they were drowned in the market hubbub, and never found them again. Billy ran past stalls selling fishing rope and spiced nuts and sundries and secrets; he ran through crowds of men in top hats, thickets of women with parasols and prams, gaggles of grimy children playing conkers and booboo and shake'em; he ran until he was tired, and when he finally stopped running he realized he was thoroughly lost.
Published on Feb 14, 2012
by Carlie St. George
Your whole world is the hospital room. Everything else is light years away. New York City, for instance: sometimes it moves closer, sometimes further. On 9/11, it was in your backyard, but today, today, it's Pluto, an inconceivable distance of darkness and dying stars. Who cares that aliens have landed, are turning skyscrapers into confetti? Who cares if the city's on fire? Nothing on Pluto can touch you. Everyone outside this room is an astronaut, and you're never surprised when astronauts die.
Published on Sep 29, 2017
by Adam Stemple
The dragon is not a metaphor. He is meat and muscle, scales and teeth. He is claws that tear through castle stone and fire that leaves naught but smoke and ash where once a village stood. He is destruction given wing. Your horse is saddled, your armor polished, your lance sharpened to a point so fine the ladies could do their needlework with it. But that won’t be enough. It has never been enough. It is your father’s horse you ride, your grandfather’s armor you wear. The lance you couch beneath your arm had a name before your family did, hallowed and long though your history be. These things have come to you only because your father strove to defeat the dragon, as did his father before him, and on back through the ages. They are all charred bone on the mountain now, as are the knights who accompanied them. The squires, too. Just boys, those--but the dragon cares not for the age of those who defy him, only for how brightly they burn.
Published on Jun 9, 2021
by Eric James Stone
You start reading a story, and realize it seems to be in second person, present tense, like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure stories. But it's not. This story is actually in epistolary format--a message from me to you. I've chosen this method of communication with you because it's unobtrusive, and you can always dismiss it as being just a story. Who am I? Well, I'm an author, obviously. The more important question is: Who are you? And the answer is: You are the protagonist of my current work in progress, a novel about--Well, that would involve some spoilers.
Published on Oct 13, 2014
by Steve Rasnic Tem
The blessed truck would arrive at midnight to carry them out of Phoenix. Each day Miquel prayed to the Virgin for her forgiveness: for hiding in the basement of this house he did not own, for dragging his own mother out of her home while Guatemala burned, for promising that life would be better here, for hiring that coyote to take them into an abandoned city whose summer temperatures averaged over 150 degrees, for not stopping el diablo when he opened the door and dumped them onto the melting asphalt, for not insisting that his mother wear gloves, or shoes.
Published on Aug 8, 2019
by Natalia Theodoridou
"Here, let me," Hayley says. She holds my eyelids open and drips a few pseudos onto my eyeballs. Then she lets go and the fake tears run down the sides of my eyes. Her breath is hot on my damp cheekbones. It's the most erotic thing I've ever experienced. "Now do me," she says and hands me the bottle of eye drops. She tilts her head back while I run my finger over her jawline. She holds her lids open for me and I squirt some pseudos into her eyes. I watch her blink and fake-cry, her cheeks streaked with mascara. She pulls me towards her and kisses me. Her pseudos taste like strawberries. I prefer salty--more natural, more like the real thing--but I don't say anything. I try to focus on the sensation of the tears running down my face. Feel the release. I don't feel a thing, but it's fake it till you make it, isn't it?
Published on Sep 30, 2016
by James Van Pelt
Happy and scared and thinking about odds, I turn from Forest onto Broadway, setting sun behind me, a mile from The Haggard Traveler, a sports bar where the afternoon phone crew meets for FAC. Broadway's a miserable stretch of road between Forest and the bar: ten unsynchronized stop lights, one per block. During rush hours it's possible to sit through two or three cycles per light, waiting for traffic to clear, only to hit the next light red, but I'm not thinking about that much. It's Friday and FAC. Madison might be there. I hope she is. Two days away from phone banks and scripted calls, and rush hour is past. The street's nearly empty, stretching before me with its stop lights, all of them, green.
Published on Mar 13, 2015
by Sean Vivier
We called them the Decennarchy, since they were a government that appeared every ten years, and because our librarian liked languages. Sure enough, ten years to the day since the last sighting, their domed temple came into being on the town green. How to describe the Decennarchs? They are like us, but they are not. They are speeding wisps in suits. They are frail and intimidating at once. For their day on Earth, they hurry from one end of town to the other. And they pronounce their laws.
Published on Dec 18, 2017
by Sean Vivier
Marisol Prieto watched the boulder yet again slip and fall from its perch. She sighed. "This has no utility." King Sisyphus eyed her with disdain and defensive ego. "I almost got it that time. I'll get it this time."
Published on Oct 30, 2019
by Sean Vivier
A lot is made of those who walk away from the city. And I get it. I do. It's a shock to learn the city's secret. That a child must suffer for our prosperity. Of course it breaks a lot of people. Of course they walk away. Of course they abandon their civic duty. Sure there are those who go about their business as before. Who bury the new knowledge so they can return to their normal lives and go about their days. To keep their sanity. To convince themselves they're still good people. To follow the easiest course.
Published on Aug 5, 2020
by Lydia Waldman
We eat cold macaroni and cheese from the saucepan while the newscaster tells us that the adverbs will go first. First is difficult for her. Each time they cut from the international footage to her rote summary of the crisis, she pauses too long with her teeth against her lower lip. By the fifth time, you can see the bloody spot where she's bitten down in frustration. By the tenth, she's leaving a blank space in her sentences and waving her hands as if to say You know what I mean.
Published on Dec 17, 2013
by Ginger Weil
The watch strapped to your wrist is a time machine, recording your movement forward through time. The ticking drives you mad, and you can't get that smear off the dial. The earth is a time machine, spinning you through a succession of days. Each day is long enough to dig a grave behind your house, but you are running out of open land. At night, things crawl out of the graves and you wait for the earth to spin you forward in time again and bring back the sun.
Published on Jun 11, 2015
by Ginger Weil
My best friend Sandra and I used to joke around about how our day was going to come. We stayed in town after high school. I got a job at the diner. Sandra worked at a resort farther up the mountain. "Someday, Lesley," Sandra liked to say, "our ships are going to come in and we'll leave all this behind." Someday came last weekend. But Sandra sailed off in her ship without me, and now I'm not sure what to do next.
Published on Jan 21, 2019
by Leslie What
Shadows flicker across wall and tin ceiling. The dancing light exaggerates the lines of old Nurse's profile to the chiseled, stony look of a gargoyle. The girl feigns sleep as Nurse walks away. She blows a kiss Nurse will not feel, whispers a goodnight Nurse will not hear. The heavy door swings shut, closing off the candlelight, and Nurse waddles down the hall, her voluminous robes swishing, the floorboards groaning beneath her weight. The girl holds her breath to await the ungraceful thud that indicates the old woman has lowered herself onto the chamber pot. The girl counts twenty before tugging on the sheets to free her limbs from bondage, for Nurse insists on pulling the bedclothes tight. Silence follows prayers, and the girl counts another twenty before sitting up. She spends her days and nights outsmarting the passage of time. After her next round of twenty counts she hears Nurse signaling day's end with a deep sigh. The girl is free of Nurse's ministrations until tomorrow. Only now does she dare leave her bed. She kneels on the floor and thrusts her hands beneath the feather mattress, feeling for the photograph she has hidden there. It is a photograph of her father, purloined from her mother during their last visit a year ago. The girl dares not look at it during daylight--so great is her fear Nurse will confiscate her one memento of the mysterious fellow known as The Elephant Man.
Published on Feb 1, 2011
by Sean Williams
Pop goes the cork, momentarily stilling the dawn chorus, and I am filled with the sense that what we are doing in the cemetery is slightly profane. My mother, my sister Cass, and I on a picnic rug at the foot of Dad's grave. Thank God we brought sparkling wine, not a heavy red. "Don't ever think you're too good for this world," Mum says, raising her empty glass to be filled with a blush that perfectly matches both the lightening sky and the skin around her eyes, "because you've probably got it the wrong way around. That's what your dad used to say."
Published on Apr 5, 2017
by Sean Williams
Wow. Best. Dream. Ever.
Published on Dec 19, 2019
by Caroline M. Yoachim
This is a story everyone has heard many times before. It begins with a dragon. You are not the dragon. Dragons are scaly creatures that breathe fire, and you have soft skin and breathe air that smells like whatever you ate for lunch. The dragon--which is definitely not you--is coiled around the base of a tower. (You are not the tower, because it is an inanimate object. I shouldn't have to tell you this.)
Published on Mar 31, 2016