I didn’t kill God; we should clear that up right away. I just captured him and put him in a little box. It sounds harder than it actually was. Hannah helped me make it. Her dark, sad eyes so serious and focused behind the wire-rimmed glasses she always wore, her slender fingers tracing the passages […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My twin brother had been a dry-eyed baby, and he grew into a dry-eyed boy. “Yaakov, why don’t you ever cry?” I asked him the day we buried my uncle’s family. He shrugged. “Maybe you carry all the tears for both of us, Anna.” I thought he might be right. In the past month I […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
10. _Influenza siderius_ begins as a general malaise. That is always the first symptom. Perhaps you wish to doze on the sofa, but your husband suggests a little fresh air instead. You do feel better after the walk, but by the next morning the listlessness has returned tenfold. Your husband complains when you order takeout […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It looks like a quantity of strawberry jam squeezed into a cheap polythene shower cap. Even down to the darkened pips and the intimation someone’s attempted to pick it up and squished it in the middle. Clint adjusts the telescopic sight and tilts his head, upping the magnification, but knocking the thermal readout to the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Before Heidi came along, Michael did everything he could to keep the damn faeries out of his apartment. Every night he washed and dried his dishes, never left one dripping in the drying rack. Always fished the food particles from the drain, took the trash out, sealed his cereal in glass jars. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The last day of orientation at New Plymouth University, Work Placement called students up in pairs. Rhonda Morillo took the chair next to a big-boned blond girl–Deirdre, pretty sure–as their peer advisor announced their “exciting cultural opportunity”: stocking shelves at Kiriki Grocery. Kiriki Grocery by Tory Hoke The last day […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Alone — but not lonely. Three days, we’ve been on this planet. Over a year, Earth-time. But we don’t talk about Earth-time anymore. It weakens morale, says Sir Overgeneral Halfish. My morale went out the window when I found out that I was sentenced to be transported off planet. Alienated […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“I will not leave this cavern,” the voice said as soon as I stepped into the cave mouth. A baritone decaying into vibrato, an old man’s voice, full of dignity and pride. I tried to pinpoint its source, but the air was thick with fog. The haze seemed to originate from inside the chamber, where […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The shovel bit through the foamy snow on the top stair of my front porch, then stopped with a clang. I scraped away the snow to see what was beneath. Ice. Serve me right for not shoveling after the snow had fallen last night. It had thawed, then the temperature had dropped into the deep […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The fiery orange sun hung high over the Bangkok skyline to the south. Professor Tina Montri rearranged her skirt and adjusted the alligator skin briefcase on her lap which held the presentation and research notes from her talk at the university. A breeze stirred on the back of her neck, warm and relaxing. She could […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Izam’s fingers moved on their own. They found his sunken chest. And counted his ribs. His father would have slapped his hand away. A stupid habit of a stupid boy. A stupid starving boy who counted his ribs when he was hungry even though it only made him hungrier. Izam knew it was stupid but […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today I am going to the island. I climb the slick wood stairs down to Whitmuth beach. The wind blows fierce through the town like usual and swirls back out to sea, smoky with our coal fires and smacking with hot oil from the fry shops up and down the boardwalk. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The fish were restless. They spun the water mossy dark until the pond was the color of crushed bottles. Pey held onto her sister’s hand. They peered down at the water. This morning, their mother opened her eyes and said she was too cold to get out of bed, so their father said they would […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The good news is, zombie unicorns almost never bite. The bad news is, even a tiny scratch from a zombie unicorn horn will turn you into a zombie. Mom discovered that by accident. Why I Hate Zombie Unicorns by Laura Pearlman The good news is, zombie unicorns almost never […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Susan found her boss’s feelings drawer by accident. She drank too much and took a wrong turn in Sundrun’s apartment at the office holiday party, while looking for the bathroom. It had been all the rage five years ago, getting your feelings surgically removed. After a sensectomies, some people had the feelings stuffed or encased […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A collection of stories from the Cat With Blue Fur Writing Contest. Meow Meow Bang Bang by Oliver Buckram She was the kind of dame you never forget. Lips as moist and pink as smoked salmon. Legs as long and well maintained as the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The chair first appeared on a Thursday afternoon on the sidewalk in front of the Dollar Bank and Trust on Lancaster Street in Pulaski, Kansas. Nobody saw how it got there. At least, no reliable eyewitnesses have ever come forward, so we are unable to pinpoint the exact moment of its arrival. Customers began to […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Captain Confederation was annoyed when he got off the elevator and it showed. It would have been so simple and logical for him to land on the roof of the Superhero Administration Centre, or in the ample grounds surrounding it, but these alternatives were no longer open to him. Last month Transport Canada had proposed […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nate had expected the first serial killer. In fact the first thing he’d said to Kelly once their Ford rolled to a stop on the shoulder was, “This is serial killer country. We’re finished.” She made scaredy-cat eyes and drew a finger across her throat. “Finished,” he enunciated. She’d heard his bake before, something to […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
After a year in San Francisco, my legs grew strong again. A hill and a half lay between the bookstore where I found work and the apartment I shared with the Kotos. Every morning and evening I walked, breathing mist and rain into my desert-scarred lungs, and every morning the walk was a little easier. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
You’re listening to the Mike Colavito Show on Cleveland’s home for straight talk, WCUY 1200. The opinions expressed on this program do not reflect those of WCUY, its management, or its sponsors. Fair warning; I’m in a mood today, folks. We’ve got a mayor whose only talent seems to be showing up at luncheons and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The ghost in my attic is Margaret, but she lets me call her Margie. She was seventy-six years old when she died, and now that she’s a ghost she sits in her rocking chair day and night, holding a tiny baby in her arms. The baby rarely moves and almost never cries. His name is […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What he loved was the silence, the pristine clarity of the ice shelf: the purposeful breathing of the dogs straining against their traces, the hiss of the runners, the opalescent arc of the sky. Garner peered through shifting veils of snow at the endless sweep of glacial terrain before him, the wind gnawing at him, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Walking back up the road toward home, I saw Rich Hartzell locking up his cabin. His car was stuffed to the roof with cardboard boxes and black trash bags; only the driver’s seat was empty. The Only Game in Town by Desmond Warzel Walking back up the road […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
There’s a dream you have. It’s not a proper dream. It’s impatient, fired with urgency. It arrives without warning, veering suddenly out of the night. You’re kneeling on the bridge. It’s late afternoon. Clouds mass low in the sky, seagulls wheel over the bridge spans, humidity hangs thick in the air. Cars speed by on […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
H.P. Lovecraft Month continues with an originally commissioned story: “To Whatever” by Shaenon Garrity. To know or not to know is the penultimate question in Lovecraftian horror. What mysteries lie beyond the wall of our understanding? What if we were to commune with whatever lay beyond that wall? Or in that wall? That is the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I was shot with the cure in the dark. Later, someone would tell me it was a Tuesday, but before the tranq dart I didn’t know such a thing existed. It was either day or night, hungry or sated, alive or dead. Then there was the cure and I was hauled to the Sanitation Center […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“It all began with the chicken in the end of the road,” she said. “Pardon?” I gestured. “Could you say that again?” Miss Sanderson reached out and tapped the translation device on the table, then picked it up and fiddled with its settings. She was the ugliest female of her species I’d ever seen– obscenely […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sheriff Lindley was asleep on the toilet in the Pachuco County courthouse when someone started pounding on the door. “Bert!” the voice yelled as the sheriff jerked awake. “Gol Dang!” said the lawman. The Waco newspaper slid off his lap onto the floor. Night of the Cooters by Howard Waldrop Sheriff […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
