(3256 words, 17 minutes)
read moreSomething small and metal smacks against flesh. I swallow and turn. A woman with wings of iridescent blue stands on the road. Her wings stir the dust, sending a different wind skidding across the road.
Stories in category Horror
Tomorrow and Tomorrow
(3844 words, 20 minutes)
read more“Is that your son?” Another mother sat down on the bench next to Tuyet. Tuyet nodded, barely taking her eyes from Vien. She ran the handiwipe over the ends of her fingers, trying to avoid the spots where she had rubbed the skin raw.
“Where did he get his new lungs?”
For a moment longer, Tuyet watched her son before turning to the woman. She held out a badge, her id and rank rotating ad infinitum in the holo over it. “I’d like to ask you to come to the station with me, Dr. Phan.”
A Tableau of Things That Are
(9065 words, 46 minutes)
read moreLife as a statue is easy. They make you ascend the pedestal, turn you to stone, remove your ability to move, and leave you to watch the turn of the seasons in a world you cannot touch or care about, anymore. You can only stand in the public garden where all the convicted are placed, and you watch with dull and distant interest at the visitors who stroll past, living the lives of the quick, sometimes interested in all the immobile condemned, and sometimes not.
Rotten Little Town: An Oral History (Abridged)
(9672 words, 49 minutes)
read moreIt’s been over twenty years since the last episode of Rotten Little Town, the smash hit occult western that ran for six seasons between 1993 and 1999, plus one two-hour reunion movie released in 2000 that wrapped up most of the dangling storylines in such dramatic fashion that it remains highly debated today.
Many Happy Returns
(5434 words, 28 minutes)
read moreGorman was on foot, crossing a frozen continent. It was not Antarctica. That was light years away, and so over. Nobody went there anymore. This continent he had chosen for his latest adventure was bigger, broader, colder, deadlier, nastier. It was not fun. Every step was an occasion for regret. He was probably going to die. He was glad he came.
Decorating with Luke
(2768 words, 14 minutes)
read moreIn a second I’m going to ask you to turn around and look at that spot to the right of the door. But you’ll need to brace yourself. It’s going to be a shock. Just keep one thing in mind: you’re safe. This room may smell of him and you will see soon that it also feels like him, but I promise you hat he will never hurt you, or anybody else, ever again.
Greetings, Humanity! Welcome To Your Choice of Species!
(2528 words, 13 minutes)
read moreThe species pictured here is the very same one that reported you to the Commission, a species that some of you recognized as quite possibly sentient, but never quite enough to modulate your behavior. You will likely recognize them as one subspecies of terrestrial dolphin, whose testimony about you during the hearing included the most stirring tribute offered by any of your world’s unprecedented eight existing sapient races, to wit: “Some of them aren’t all bad, and it’s a shame that even the good ones have to go, but by and large, we’ve had it up to here with them.”
A Place Without Portals
(2148 words, 11 minutes)
read moreShe would not have reasoned that all of this would have made more sense than assaulting her with pig barbarians in plate armor and driving her to the exact place where any dark lord fearful of prophecy would not want her to go…
Sand Castles
(8243 words, 42 minutes)
read moreHere, on the beach, sat an immense sand castle.
It had been sculpted over the course of three frenzied days by a team of artists who had seen fit to become world-class competitors at that delightful but largely irrelevant skill, who had come to the beach at the tail end of warm weather to create an ephemeral masterwork. Crowds had gathered to watch the construction in delight.
Arvies
(4978 words, 25 minutes)
read moreThis is the story of a mother, and a daughter, and the right to life, and the dignity of all living things, and of some souls granted great destinies at the moment of their conception, and of others damned to remain society’s useful idiots.
The Narrow Escape of Zipper-Girl
(3889 words, 20 minutes)
read moreI’m a neck man. Some guys notice breasts first. Others are first taken by long shiny legs. I notice necks. I’ve always noticed necks, the most beautiful and most vulnerable attribute women have.
Hers had a zipper.
I had seen any number of studs and implants and piercings on women, but had never seen a zipper.
Scenting the Dark
(3697 words, 19 minutes)
read moreLifting the stopper from the vial to his nose, Penn inhaled slowly. Against the neutral backdrop of his ship’s cleanroom, he picked out aromas of quince, elderberry, and bright Martian soil that hinted of blood, with undercurrents of cinnamon and Zeta Epsilon’s fragrantly sweet longgrass. He sighed, blowing the scents out again. The perfume was still out of balance.
The Arm Ouroboros
(2128 words, 11 minutes)
read moreI know that I should not have done what I just did. I do not understand the madness that made me. I should get on the phone, somehow, call an ambulance, somehow, get these problems dealt with, somehow, but I live in fear of what I will find out if I do manage to stagger into an emergency room and somebody is able to tell me exactly what has become of my left hand.
Her Husband’s Hands
(5780 words, 29 minutes)
read moreRebecca’s eyes inevitably wandered to the wrists, which ended in thick silver bands, a lot like bracelets except for the flat bottoms where arms should have emerged. They, Rebecca knew, contained not just the life support—without which her husband’s hands would just be graying meat—but also his most recent memory backup, without which everything he had ever been, and everything he had ever done, would now be gone.
In the Temple of Celestial Pleasures
(6170 words, 31 minutes)
read moreThe gate was an obscene bas-relief in which hundreds of miniature human forms coupled in combinations of two or three, or four, no two positions alike, all possible sexual combinations represented. It was the most intricate work of art Jin had ever seen with his own eyes, and it moved him not at all.
Fortune’s Final Hand
(7480 words, 38 minutes)
read moreFortune entered the gaming floor, where instead of heading straight for a table she wandered among them, noting the places where people wept and howled like wolves, emptied but not yet judged broke.