“Too Poor to Sin” by H.L. Fullerton (Originally published in Mysterion.) Grandfather squandered our family's fortune on forgiveness, forcing Father to enlist in the Legion and serve the angels. This was before he met Mother and they had me, though the angels' war still rages. Father doesn't say much about his years of service, except that it would've bankrupted us had he bought an honorable discharge. Instead he quit, kept his wages and is banking on God's leniency. He says he amassed those sins...
Jan 23, 2018•42 min•Ep. 188
“Penelope's Song” by Samuel Marzioli (Originally published in The Third Spectral Book of Horror Stories.) Penelope gazed through her bedroom window, mesmerized by the motion of the night. Flowers trembled, grass ruffled and trees swayed, flailing their branches. The sight of it unsettled her. In fifteen years she hadn’t learned much about the world, but she did know this: when the wind was absent like it was tonight, a garden wasn’t supposed to move an inch. It could only mean one thing; the Gna...
Jan 09, 2018•37 min•Ep. 187
“Avarice” by Michael Rimar (Originally published in Darwin's Evolutions.) Shadow blocked the glare of Uttum’s twin suns. Saleem looked up at the source, a man dressed in robes pale as bleached bone. “Offering for the poor?” Saleem kept his tone weak and pitiful, offering his wicker basket to the stranger. “I have more than offerings for you, my young friend.” The stranger crouched down to look Saleem face to face. Eyes green as palm fronds regarded him with benevolence. Strands of ebony hair pok...
Dec 26, 2017•46 min
“In the Late December” by Greg van Eekhout (Originally published in Strange Horizons.) Here's a secret of the North Pole: Santa powders his hands with talc before donning his thick red mittens. It is a small secret, true, but some would give anything to steal even that. A secret is a detail, and here in the late December, a detail is as precious as a true name. Santa, a red exclamation in a white world, walks the reindeer line, stroking sugar-and-cinnamon fur. The reindeer shiver and snort and s...
Dec 12, 2017•26 min
“M” by Russell Hemmell (Originally published in Not One of Us.) We look like them, Christian thought, admiring the fresco in the charnel house and its ghastly figures, scary and eerily beautiful. He adjusted the heavy cloak over his shoulders. The evening was damp and cold, and he was tired after a whole day on the move. But he could not avoid that feeling of elation. He had followed her for too long, and days had become months. Years. Winters, summers, clear starry nights of patient stalking. A...
Nov 28, 2017•30 min•Ep. 184
“Customer Service Hobgoblin” by Paul R. Hardy (Originally published in Unidentified Funny Objects 5.) Beeep. "Good morning, you're through to Robin. How may I receive your prayer?" "Oh. Hello? My name is Bishop Augusto de Figueroa. Am I speaking to God?" "No, sir, my name's Robin. How can I --" "Well, young man, I wanted to talk to God. You see it's very important that I speak to him." "Yes, of course, sir. You've come through on the Methodist line, is that --" "No, no, no, this is wrong. I am C...
Nov 13, 2017•36 min•Ep. 183
“The Man Who Did Nothing” by Karen Traviss (Originally published in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection.) Hursley Rise, May 2 There was a boy – five, maybe six – sitting on half a discarded mattress by the kerb as Jeff drove down the road. At first he thought the child was trying to open a bottle of pop, but the closer he got, the better he could see that the boy was making a petrol bomb. Jeff slowed to a crawl and then stopped. He didn't dare switch the engine of...
Oct 31, 2017•49 min
“Psychopomps” by Judith Field(Originally published in The Colored Lens, Summer 2014.)Mark’s next door neighbour and business partner Pat kept telling him that power flowed through his veins. He took a breath and closed his eyes, trying to will the power back out again and into the ash wand in his outstretched hand. He pointed it at Pat’s door. A narrow beam of blue light squeezed out of the end and hit the lock. Nothing happened. Sighing, he folded the wand and put it in his pocket. He took out ...
Oct 24, 2017•33 min
“The Tavern at the Ford” by Dave Smeds(Originally published in Sword and Sorceress XXVIII.)Until that awful night, Azure had always assumed she would live out her entire life in thevillage. That’s how it had been for generations.Grandpa had shared the history one day while standing with her on the old stone bridge.“There used to be a ford there,” he said, pointing to the willow flats where Coil and Azure likedto play. Grandpa’s great-grandmother Cinnamon had drowned there while crossing the rive...
Oct 17, 2017•1 hr
“Unraveling” by K.G. Anderson(Originally published in Triangulation: Beneath the Surface.)"Sarah -- he's using you!" My voice rose into the whine my daughter loathed, but I couldn't stop. I pressed the phone to my ear. "You're 16. I absolutely forbid -- "My runaway daughter informed me that she hated me."Have fun with the old witches," she said, and hung up.I climbed out of the car, slammed the battered door, and slumped against the sun-baked metal. Gradually my heartbeat slowed, but still felt ...
Oct 10, 2017•25 min
“Mouth of the Jaguar” by Evan Dicken(Originally published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #20.)Hummingbird was to be the final sacrifice of the day. The man before her struggled on a raisedstone slab, chest heaving as a flock of blood-spattered priests pinned his arms and legs. Sunlight glitteredon the Cazonci's obsidian dagger--curved like a jaguar's claw to better hook bone and tear flesh. Thecrowd around the ziggurat waited, caught in the anxious pause between lightning and thunder.The blade fell...
Oct 03, 2017•56 min
Main Story: “Perchance to Dream” by David Morrell(Originally published in Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy.)Dr. Baker.Dr. Baker.He came to my office on a Friday afternoon. Tall, slender, and sandy-haired, he had a thin, aristocratic face that might have been handsome if it weren’t so haggard. His eyes looked puffy. Red streaked their whites. I was surprised when I later learned that he was forty. He appeared at least ten years older.He said his name was Jody Cooke – he spelled his last name, ...
Sep 26, 2017•49 min
“The Hour of the Rat” by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt(Originally published in Cirsova Magazine #1.)shigururu ya winter rainnezumi no wataru a mouse runskoto no ue across the koto-- Yosa Buson (1716-1783)Nezumi's heart pounded as she pressed against the wall. She willed herself to be as invisible as the night all around her. She put a hand over her mouth so that the puffs of her breath would not give away her position. Within the estate beyond the wall, a guard approached her position. Nezumi whispered ...
Sep 19, 2017•33 min
“The Demi-Arcanist's Will” by Jakob Drud(Originally published in The Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Volume 2.)The cabinet was all but invisible in the fumes, except in the spot where Jarn Dinaris wove his grounding seam into Master Elosivan's seam of transmission. There the metal hissed and glowed in dark purples as they wove the commissioned refrigeration pattern.Jarn's focus on the pattern was so complete that he didn't immediately detect the failure in old Master Elosivan's con...
Sep 12, 2017•45 min
Flash Fiction: “The Banshee Behind Beamon's Bakery” by Khalidaah Muhammad-Ali(Originally published in Diabolical Plots #21.)Most nights the alley behind Beamon’s Bakery is just an alley.The street lamp bleeds piss yellow light, casting jagged shadows around the overflowing dumpster and discarded boxes. The walls are tagged with gang signs, claiming territory that was never theirs, yardage, bodies, souls, rights.Some nights a transient clears away the broken glass, the random detritus, to squat f...
Sep 05, 2017•34 min
“Princess Cosima and the 1,000 Cats” by Sarah L. Byrne(Originally published in Betwixt #4.)"Provide ships or sails adapted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will not fear even that void." -- Johannes Kepler, 1610The red palace was home to a thousand cats. Or so people said. Princess Cosima, twenty, beautiful and bored, walked through the courtyards until she saw a lithe sandy female sunning itself on the flagstones. She slipped into the cat's mind and sent it prowling across th...
Aug 29, 2017•51 min
Main Story: “The Tower of Morning's Bones” by Hal Duncan(Originally published in Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy.)“Once upon a time, the land of Shuber and Hamazi,Many tongued Sumer, the great Land of princeship’s divine laws,Uri, the land having all that is appropriate,The land Martu, resting in security,The whole universe, the people in unison,To Enlil, in one tongue gave praise."— Samuel N. Kramer (trans.), Enmerkar and The Lord of ArattaDaybreak in the UnderworldA dream, astream,...
Aug 22, 2017•55 min
“The Seal of Sulaymaan” by Tracy Canfield(Originally published in Fantasy Magazine, July 2010.)Back when there were other ifriit to talk to, I’d tell them Morocco was as far as you can get from Mecca without leaving civilization. In Agadir, with its casinos and five-star hotels and nightclubs filled with Moroccan tourists sporting European fashions too daring to wear at home, even these most fractious of beings could not have argued; but here, a mere twenty miles out of town, I could barely have...
Aug 15, 2017•43 min
“The Breeding Dust” by Dennis Mombauer(Originally published in Outliers of Speculative Fiction.)Silent, angular houses with white plaster, a sand-suffocated well and a couple of stunted palms huddled together on the low ground, a once bustling city that only the ghostly desert wind inhabited now.The sun gleamed down without mercy, hanging in the sky as a swirling ball that made the air flicker, and the small caravan decided to rest in this ancient oasis. The camels were led down the loose sand d...
Aug 08, 2017•36 min
“Where There's Magic” by Michelle Ann King(Originally published in Kaleidotrope, April 2016.)The witch had a favourite saying: where there's life, there's magic. There was a second part -- where there's magic, there's death -- but she usually kept that to herself.She placed the newborn into the father's arms. He gazed upon the babe with wonder, then upon his wife with concern."Why does she still scream?" he said. "Can't you ease her pain?""There is still pain because she carries twins. There is ...
Aug 01, 2017•52 min
"“Princess Lily's Wedding” by Robert J. Santa(Originally published in Blood, Blade & Thruster.)"I love him, Daddy!"King Frederick breathed deeply. It had been a very long conversation with his youngest child, punctuated by much pouting and exasperated sighing and stomping of pretty feet. Frederick stood over her while she held her face in her hands and cried. He wanted to do nothing more than pout and sigh and stomp his feet. Of course, he couldn't, even in his daughter's bedroom with no one...
Jul 25, 2017•30 min
"“By Appointment to the Throne” by Alter S. Reiss(Originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #155.)Getting up early enough to open a kitchen hurts. Leaving a warm bed before second watch makes your head ache, and you can feel the chill going from the cobbles through your feet and into your soul. When it's wet on top of the cold, it's the nearest thing to hell. But once I'm there and I'm in the rhythm, it just moves. I check the carcasses as they come in, kick up a fuss if they try to give u...
Jul 18, 2017•46 min
"“Phoenix for the Amateur Chef” by Scott Huggins(Originally published in Sword and Sorceress 30.)The phoenix fell.Its sobbing death cry silenced by a coat of ravening flame, it corkscrewed to earth, bleeding dirty white fire across the dusk.What struck the cliff face above our heads was a ball of charred meat. We ducked the searing gobbet of flesh. Only a little pile of ash and bone was left, rapidly whitening, like charcoal.I looked at Tywin, who stood sucking his teeth and polishing his great ...
Jul 11, 2017•54 min
"“The Sickness” by Valjeanne Jeffers(Originally published in Griots: Sisters of the Spear.)The Bini warriors crouched in the high grass of the savanna. They'd passed the Fula borders a mile back, and now were a hundred yards from the Adobe mud city. At the forefront they were armed with sword and shield, behind them the archers readied their bows.General Chinua led the army. To his right was Nandi, a tall woman with braided hair, high cheekbones and full lips and her ebony-skinned husband, Sula,...
Jul 04, 2017•49 min
"“The Centaur's Daughter” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam(Originally published in A cappella Zoo.)As a little girl I never understood my father’s night self. It’s hard to be a kid whose father is two people. He changed every day with the sky. I cried at sunrise. I had trouble sleeping. Still do, and I’ve had seventeen years to process my father’s differences.When I was small enough that my hands didn’t fit around a soda bottle, I couldn’t be left alone. The babysitter would coax me from the safety of m...
Jun 27, 2017•35 min
"“Spirit Dance” by Douglas Smith(Originally published in Tesseracts 6, this work is the prequel story to Douglas's novel The Wolf at the End of the World.)In the beginning of things, men were as animals and animals as men. -- Cree legendVera made a warding sign as I entered the store, my hound Gelert trailing behind me. She pretended to wipe her hands on her faded blue apron, but I caught the dance of her fingers.“Hello, Vera. It’s been a while,” I said.“Yes, yes it has, Mr. Blaidd,” she said to...
Jun 20, 2017•54 min
"“Bones of a Righteous Man” by Michael Ezell(Originally published in Fantasy for Good.)-- Has the life of a righteous man been taken?-- We find that it has, Excellency.-- And what shall become of the killer?-- He shall carry the bones of the righteous man until their weight does cause his death.The setting sun reflected in a million rose-hued sparkles across the surface of the Glass Desert. The slit in Traveler’s eyeshades cut everything down to a thin panorama. A glittering expanse of heat glas...
Jun 13, 2017•52 min
"Flash Fiction: “Never Leave Me” by Michelle Ann King(Originally published at Daily Science Fiction.)Katrine grew up with the stories, she knew them as well as her own name. First there was true love's kiss, then the fair maiden became the radiant bride, and she lived happily ever after.But the stories all stopped there, and Katrine hadn't realized just how much ever after there would be.Michelle Ann King was born in East London and now lives in Essex. Her stories have appeared in over seventy d...
Jun 06, 2017•35 min
"Flash Fiction: “Mysterious Ways” by David Steffen(Originally published in Uncle John's Flush Fiction Anthology.)The afterlife was arbitrary, Sam Fichtner decided. There was no Heaven or Hell, only one place. He'd had plenty of time to ponder since he crossed over. The Hereafter was filled with endless rows of clear domes like the one he occupied, a space of infinite size covered with a grid of cake platters. When people died, they were each partitioned into one of these domes, to spend the rest...
May 30, 2017•28 min
"“Vendemiaire” by L.S. Johnson(Originally published in B is for Broken.)There was a time when Arianne could not see over the rows of her father’s grapevines. At the height of the summer the vineyard became a vast maze and she would follow her mother, watching her taste the grapes, her skirts swaying as she walked, a fine haze of dirt collecting on their hems. The world then was black soil and green life and her mother striding ahead, head held high, lips and fingers stained crimson from the juic...
May 23, 2017•1 hr
