short fiction

We're redesigning our site. Read about the upcoming changes here.

ByNadia Bongo

Born a Ghost

The day I was born in Mwana hospital in Libreville, Mother realized that I was born to become a ghost.

ByDelilah S. Dawson

Spread the Word

I’m tall because I’m actually a year older, but they don’t need to know about what happened last year. This is a do-over.

ByZin E. Rocklyn

Birds

Her touch was like dry ice, foreign and painful, yet warm to the point of hot and I’d been so, so cold, shivers still ran through me with each stroke.

ByDamien Angelica Walters

Twenty Pieces of Documentation Presented to the Emergency Committee on the Study and Understanding of the M3D1154 Contagion

One raises her hands to her face, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. In turns, they hug the fifth girl and each other and then all walk out of the camera’s view together.

ByErica L Satifka

Don't let your babies grow up to be monsters.

Papas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Slug Monsters

As Ruth pages through the look book with her extensors, a squeal rises from whatever remains of her flesh mouth. With a start, Jerome Parker realizes he hasn’t seen one organic part of his daughter in years.

ByJolie Toomajan

All good things must come to an end by jolie tomman.

All the Good You Did Not Do

When the body on the floor of the elevator sits up, Saul doesn’t give her a chance to lumber to her feet. Saul shoots her, too.

ByR.J. Joseph

Bettina

How could I find joy in my heart when my soul cried out with theirs, understanding I would surely meet my end as dreadfully as they, forcefully tethered to one who I despised and, moreover, feared?

ByE. Catherine Tobler

Homewrecker

The house we’re headed to dates from the mid-1700s and I’m pretty excited t— [garbled]. There may not be quite as much wrecking with this one. The owners want to keep her largely intact [tires thump] most of our work will take place in the attic.

ByA.M. Lomuscio

Nightglow Pizza

By every measure of life, CX2389 should be dead. Its star was more ash than fire. But, just as Fara had found on other worlds, life can thrive in the strangest of places.