First Story: “The Dream Eaters” by A.M. Dellamonica Mo Cottonsmith had just turned sixteen when she started Lopside Fashions, with cash she stole from a neighborhood fizz dealer. The money wasn’t enough to sustain a business, but Mo counted on getting lucky. She believed in making her own luck, too: thanks to a roving copcam, her first creation just happened to debut on all the morning news shows. The dress was daffodil yellow with simulated dewdrops on the bodice and a chainmail hoop skirt. Mo’...
Jan 13, 2015•1 hr 14 min
Flash Fiction: “Fool’s Fire” by Hayley E. Lavik It’s the cold mud that wakes me, and the taste of duckweed in my throat. In my mouth, my nose, my ears. It fills my lungs, creeps behind my eyes. I burst through the slime with a half-formed scream. I retch until I feel empty, hollow, withered. Stagger to my feet, knee-high in the sticking black mire. The mud keeps oozing from my eyes. Fetid bog slime on my arms, my breasts, my mother’s finest dress. Torn bodice, rent seams in starlight. Embroidere...
Jan 06, 2015•1 hr 2 min
First Story: “The Effigy Engine: A Tale of the Red Hats” by Scott Lynch “I took up the study of magic because I wanted to live in the beauty of transfinite mathematical truths,” said Rumstandel. He gestured curtly. In the canyon below us, an enemy soldier shuddered, clutched at his throat, and began vomiting live snakes. “If my indifference were money you’d be the master of my own personal mint,” I muttered. Of course Rumstandel heard me despite the pop, crackle, and roar of musketry echoing aro...
Dec 30, 2014•1 hr 19 min
First Story: “The Price of Glamour” by Steve Berman London, 1844 Tup Smatterpit sat on the back of a chestnut seller’s cart, his back warm from resting against the stove. Tup had sprinkled a pinch of powdered glamour over himself, and the old coster driving the wagon believed him to be one of the countless children that roamed Covent Garden’s marketplace, rather than one of the Folk. As the donkey slowly pulled the cart through the crowd, the gentle sway and the constant tick-tocking of his wais...
Dec 23, 2014•1 hr 22 min
“Childrun” by Marc Laidlaw The first thing Gorlen heard, as he mounted toward the walled village at the top of the rise, was the sound of children, their voices tumbling down the rutted track to greet him long before he saw a single villager. This meant his first sight of the pinched grey roofpeaks and ochre chimneyspikes above the wall came accompanied by the peculiar mix of dread and longing that he always felt at the sound of children playing. Were they laughing in delight or screaming in ter...
Dec 16, 2014•1 hr 21 min
First Story: “The Last Worders” by Karen Joy Fowler Charlotta was asleep in the dining car when the train arrived in San Margais. It was tempting to just leave her behind, and I tried to tell myself this wasn’t a mean thought, but came to me because I, myself, might want to be left like that, just for the adventure of it. I might want to wake up hours later and miles away, bewildered and alone. I am always on the lookout for those parts of my life that could be the first scene in a movie. Of cou...
Dec 09, 2014•1 hr 19 min
First Story: “America is Coming!” by Dario Ciriello “Nice day for the end of the world. Any sign yet?” Salvatore’s voice at his side startled Peppino. A few moments ago his friend had been flat on his back on the scrubby ground with his right hand curled around an empty wine bottle, snoring gently. Peppino shook his head. The two friends watched as the rising sun beat a familiar copper path on the tranquil sea, spilling warmth over the world. Across the gulf, beyond the mountainous headland silh...
Dec 03, 2014•1 hr 21 min
First Story: “The Swan Pilot” by L.E Modesitt Jr. I eased myself into the control couch of the ISS W.B. Yeats, making certain that all the connections were snug, and that there were no wrinkles in anything. Then I pressed the single stud that was manual, and the clamshell descended. You could call a trans-ship a corade or a cockle guided by will across the sea of endless space. You could, and it would be technically wrong. Technically wrong, but impressionalistically right, and certainly the way...
Nov 25, 2014•1 hr 19 min
First Story: “Nightship” by Kim Westwood Here the linen smells of mice and the men of old boots. I lie beneath a slaughter of ferals, cushioned in my guilty comforts and waiting for this black-caulked hulk to sink; but it glides like death along the briny channels of a shrouded city half-submerged – a Grey Zone, neither sea nor shore. Past my porthole other nightships slice the mist thickening on dank canals. Blunt-nosed, barnacled, they nudge from lock to lock, deals done and deliveries made un...
Nov 18, 2014•1 hr 20 min
First Story: “Keeper of Memory” by Todd Lockwood Daen screamed until the monster’s teeth crushed ribs against ribs. Blood poured from his lungs, a bright flower unfurling on the pavestones. He bolted upright. A tree root scraped his back as he tried to crab backwards, but his feet were entangled in his blanket. He sat still, surprised to feel moss and short grass under the heels of his hands. A soft hush surrounded him, the landscape shrouded in fog that deadened sound and confused distance, ren...
Nov 11, 2014•1 hr 28 min
First Story: “Steam Girl” by Dylan Horrocks The first time I see her, she’s standing alone behind the library, looking at the ground. Faded blue dress, scruffy leather jacket, long lace-up boots and black-rimmed glasses. But what really makes me stop and stare is the hat: a weird old leather thing that hangs down over her ears, with big thick goggles strapped to the front. Turns out she’s in my English class. She sits right next to me, still wearing the jacket and goggles and hat. She smells lik...
Nov 04, 2014•1 hr 25 min
Halloween Story: “Riding Shotgun” by Charles de Lint I wasn’t surprised to learn that my father had died. He would have been seventy-two this winter and he’d always lived hard–I doubted that had changed after I left the farm. What surprised me was that I was in his will. We hadn’t spoken in twenty-five years. I hadn’t thought of him, except in passing, for maybe half that time. If you’d asked me, I would have said he’d leave his estate to a charity like MADD, considering how it was drunk driving...
Oct 28, 2014•1 hr 38 min
First Story: “Public Safety” by Matthew Johnson Officier de la Paix Louverture folded Quartidi’s Père Duchesne into thirds, fanning himself against the Thermidor heat. The news inside was all bad, anyway: another theater had closed, leaving the Comedie Francaise the only one open in Nouvelle-Orleans. At least the Duchesne could be counted on to report only what the Corps told them to, that the Figaro had closed for repairs, and not the truth — which was that audiences, frightened by the increasi...
Oct 21, 2014•1 hr 10 min
First Story: “The Master Miller’s Tale” Part 2 by Ian R. MacLeod THERE ARE ONLY RUINS left now on Burlish Hill, a rough circle of stones. The track which once curved up from the village of Stagsby in the valley below is little more than an indentation in the grass, and the sails of the mill which once turned there are forgotten. Time has moved on, and lives have moved with it. Only the wind remains. Once, the Westovers were millers. They belonged to their mill as much as it belonged to them, and...
Oct 14, 2014•1 hr 18 min
First Story: “The Master Miller’s Tale” Part 1 by Ian R. McLeod THERE ARE ONLY RUINS left now on Burlish Hill, a rough circle of stones. The track which once curved up from the village of Stagsby in the valley below is little more than an indentation in the grass, and the sails of the mill which once turned there are forgotten. Time has moved on, and lives have moved with it. Only the wind remains. Once, the Westovers were millers. They belonged to their mill as much as it belonged to them, and ...
Oct 07, 2014•1 hr 1 min
First Story: “ Save Me Plz” by David Barr Kirtley Meg hadn’t heard from Devon in four months, and she realized that she missed him. So on a whim she tossed her sword and scabbard into the back seat of her car and drove over to campus to visit him. She’d always thought that she and Devon would be one of those couples who really did stay friends afterward. They’d been close for so long, and things hadn’t ended that badly. Actually, the whole incident seemed pretty silly to her now. Still, she’d be...
Sep 30, 2014•1 hr 12 min
First Story: “ Compartments” by Zoran Živković I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. The carriage had just pulled away from the buffer at the end of the track. Even though it was still moving slowly, had I been carrying any luggage, particularly anything heavy, I wouldn’t have made it. Luckily, all I was holding was my coat and hat. I didn’t know how to get onto a moving carriage. Was I first supposed to jump onto the step on the platform of the last car and then grab hold of the handrail, or...
Sep 23, 2014•1 hr 38 min
First Story: “ Chasing the Wind” by Elizabeth E. Wein Martha Bennett sat on her trunk in the middle of Nairobi Airport watching the other passengers disperse. She had been sitting there for two hours, waiting for her father, and reading over and over again the terse telegram she had received the day before she left Philadelphia: MAY NOT MEET. TAXI WILSON AIRPORT. HART ALDEN FLY KWALE. She was not good at waiting. It made her nervous and irritable, but Martha could not quite believe her urbane Ph...
Sep 16, 2014•59 min
First Story: “ Troll’s Night Out” by Jenny Blackford There was a lot of shrieking and laughing going on at the table behind ours. “Girls’ night out,” I said, and took a good swig of my glass of red. David barked out, “What did you say, woman?” I shouted this time, hoping to penetrate the restaurant sound barrier: “Girls’ night out.” David snorted. With his impressive snout, that was something. “Trolls’ night out, more like it,” he said. He bared his long white canines in a toothy grin. The comme...
Sep 09, 2014•1 hr 6 min
First Story: “ The Shooter at the Heartrock Waterhole” by Bill Congreve The rifle kicked, and one of the creatures — the beautiful one — was dead. But the wyrde, as Dad would have called it, began long before then. Two days ago, I shot and killed two sparrows, and a rabbit I’d called “Attitude.” Right after, I buried them out in the deep sand away from the water. At dawn yesterday, I smelled them as I woke. The sun filtered through the needles of a lone desert oak straight into my eyes. I rolled...
Sep 02, 2014•1 hr 45 min
First Story: “Perchance to Dream” by Isobelle Carmody Anna woke knowing she had been dreaming, but as so often with dreams, to wake was to forget. Strange to remember vividly that she had dreamed, yet to have no recollection of the dream. On the rare occasion that she did remember, the minute she tried to describe it, the dream would dissolve. Pinning a dream down was like trying to catch hold of a skein of smoke. Isobelle Carmody wrote her first book, Obernewtyn, when she was 14. It was accepte...
Aug 26, 2014•1 hr 19 min
First Story: “The Funeral, Ruined” by Ben Peek It was the weight that woke Linette. Her weight. The weight of herself. The flat red sky above Issuer was waiting when she opened her eyes. Five hours before, when she had closed her eyes, it had been a dark, ugly brown-red: the middle of the night. Now it was the clear early morning red, and a thick, muggy warmth was seeping through her open window with the new light. There would be no rain today. Just the heat. Just the sweat. Just that uncomforta...
Aug 19, 2014•1 hr 7 min
First Story: “The Flying Woman” by Laurel Winter The boats rested uneasily on the surface of the sea, waiting to leave. Chief Loah gripped Raff’s shoulder in one hand and tilted Dannilla’s face up with the other. “Swear you will not use your unnatural power to leave this island,” he said. “Swear on your father’s life.” His fingers squeezed Dannilla’s chin. Their father sat in one of the boats, his face shiny with tears. “I swear,” she said. “I swear. Please don’t hurt him.” Raff held silent, and...
Aug 12, 2014•1 hr 1 min
Art by Chang Yuan changyuanjou.com changyuanjou.deviantart.com First Story: “Of Men and Wolves” by An Owomoyela I woke with salt on my face, ghost trails of the night’s tears. My skin was cold. Even my back was cold where my husband should have rested; he was gone, and I should have enjoyed that aloneness. Instead a noise from the verandah roused me: a soft scuffle against the swept clay, coupling with wet, insistent sounds. It turned my stomach. I pulled my beddress tight around me, and went ou...
Aug 05, 2014•1 hr 5 min
First Story: “Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls – Part 2” by Rachel Pollack Jack Shade, known in varied places and times as Journeyman Jack, or Jack Sad, or Handsome Johnny (though not any more), or Jack Summer, or Johnny Poet (though not for a long time), or even Jack Thief, was playing Old-Fashioned Poker. That was Jack’s name for it, not because the game itself was antiquated—it was Texas Hold Em, the TV game, as Jack thought of it—but because of the venue, a private hotel room, comfortable, ...
Jul 29, 2014•1 hr 8 min
First Story: “Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls – Part 1” by Rachel Pollack Jack Shade, known in varied places and times as Journeyman Jack, or Jack Sad, or Handsome Johnny (though not any more), or Jack Summer, or Johnny Poet (though not for a long time), or even Jack Thief, was playing Old-Fashioned Poker. That was Jack’s name for it, not because the game itself was antiquated—it was Texas Hold Em, the TV game, as Jack thought of it—but because of the venue, a private hotel room, comfortable, ...
Jul 22, 2014•1 hr 8 min
First Story: “Blood, Oak, Iron” by Janny Wurts The old king of Chaldir lay dying. Everyone knew. Scarcely anyone cared. He lay under quilts in a bed with gold posts and purple hangings, his waxy, cadaverous face throwing grotesque shadows by the guttering glare of the candles. Whole seconds passed, while his unsteady breath seemed to stop…. Janny Wurts’ current audio book titles include stand-alones Master of Whitestorm, Sorcerer’s Legacy, and the Cycle of Fire trilogy, and the Empire trilogy wr...
Jul 15, 2014•1 hr 11 min
Art by René Aigner http://www.rene-aigner.de/ http://facebook.com/reneaignerillustration First Story: “Tengu Mountain” by Gregory Frost Ando met his fate in the form of a priest while he was climbing up the mountain to his Aunt Sakura’s house. Ando nearly stepped on him. The priest lay across his path like a log that had rolled down the mountain-side and come to rest where the path cut between two outcroppings of stone and, at first, that’s what Ando thought he was seeing…. Gregory Frost is the ...
Jul 08, 2014•1 hr 3 min
First Story: “Lost Son” by Maurice Broaddus “I will make my arrows drunk with blood, while my sword devours flesh: the blood of the slain and the captives, the heads of the enemy leaders.” Deuteronomy 32;42 “Favor us with a tale, storyteller,” Ghana Menin asked in his way of implying a threat if disobeyed. His lanky frame slumped in his high backed seat, still unused to the power at his command. The celebration of their latest trade agreement had gone well. Soon, more treasure would be flowing t...
Jul 01, 2014•1 hr 5 min
First Story: “Neverland Blues” by Adam Browne Michael Jackson bobs mothsoft and white in the North African nightsky. His many eyes tic and tick. Expensive lenses shiver into place, swivelling down. He takes in the view. Morocco. Tangier; the Kasbah; so beautiful, an Aladdin’s Carpet a thousand metres below him. Wanting to see more, Michael Jackson twitches an aileron. But he’s still clumsy in this body, and the movement is too emphatic. He spins, the city revolving under him, the soukh a disorde...
Jun 24, 2014•1 hr 24 min
