These excellent sci-fi and fantasy short stories are available to read for free online, and they're the perfect antidote to doomscrolling.

Mr Hyun lived down the hall, he was elderly and had arthritis so I’d cook him meals (he offered to pay, but given that I’d been cajoled into spying on him it was the least I could do). Everyone knew a...

The children saw their chance. The cheese course lay in ruins on the endless table. The parents were too tipsy or sleepy, too busy arguing or laughing or singing, too distracted loosening belts and...

He slips into the house party unnoticed, wearing a fedora and a bright pink handkerchief in his suit pocket. He is dressed like the other men, just as the invitation had specified. The women’s shawls ...

See here, o ye wistful, see here! The sweat of God, bottled. Collected from His pits. A drop grants salvation. Smell here, o ye damned! Open thy nostrils, thou wretch, smell the funk of divinity! Anim...

Ten years old, watching Unsolved Mysteries on the floor, dunking Oreos in my Keebler Elf glass of milk. A husband and wife are fighting. Not the real husband, not the real wife. A reenactment. The wif...

Delaney and I met my dad outside of the diner for his birthday. We scooted into a booth and my dad asked the waitress for her name. She smiled and he told her that she had Nice Teeth. I couldn’t stifl...

Xzibit has planted the smallest bomb inside of a bomb which rests under the floating 2001 Toyota Corolla painted candy red with pinstripe and flames which hangs on the fuse of an even bigger bomb, the...

I poked my head out of the empty ninth story office and stuttered a few syllables to get the attention of the woman walking towards the elevator. “Hey the e-mail I got said to come to 942, but it look...

There is an aperture in my hand, a thumb-print whirl where tissue once flowed uninterrupted—like a channel grown curious and turning back on itself. Last week it was a mosquito bite: a temporary river...

Tooth Book During my first trip to the dentist in years, radiographs revealed that there was something buried in my gums. Since I was too old for it to be an impacted tooth growing out sideways lik...

There is a finger, a human finger in the schoolyard grass, and it has no body. It is picked up by a girl. A quiet girl who cares a lot and does her caring quietly. This girl is Little Jessie Wylan...

After the metal band, the rubber band I absolve the sky. It is subject to forces unseen. Then I absolve my boss. He is subject to hubris and get smart quick schemes. I absolve myself, but only just...

Some kind of a noise. Or a nudge, a push. Probably both. A “Babe, babe,” together with or followed by, enough of a jostle to wake me up while trying not to startle me. “Sorry,” Michelle said. “I...

At some point everyone makes the same joke: it must be nice caring for babies who never cry. But the babies who have no eyes do cry; they’re born crying just like everyone else. You can see their tear...

I surveyed the ruin of my ancestral home. Dust had gathered thickly on the rafters, the window blinds, under the furniture. I wielded the vacuum and dustpan. I scooped gray masses of dryer lint from t...

Our sister went to help the people who came out of the volcano. She told us she was going to leave at the 4th of July picnic, while we sat around eating corn, our hands fatty with butter, silk in our ...

My Brother Danny When the rapture finally happened, I was stuck inside a crypt-themed escape room. The basement grew dark as electric candles went out one by one. The game attendant was gone. My br...

“So, ok boss, yes, you probably should have attended to the mold beneath your shower head before it got to this point. Shoulda being the operant word here. But shoulds only count in wouldas and coulda...

The first time he calls me babe, it’s the mid-90s again and I’m just a girl watching Bowie in the tightest leggings I have ever seen and wondering if I would ever dare to wish the wishes I had, since ...

When the aliens swarmed Earth, people had to be silent or communicate through ASMR. The aliens had sensitive hearing, and if you were too loud, they’d disembowel you—or decapitate you if you were luck...

Something wriggles in his mouth. The music at the party is bombastic. Tchaikovsky. The old world. He might hurl. A woman with silky plaited hair speaks to him about retirement incomes and portfolios. ...