Something has happened. It is amazing. It is unheard-of and inconceivable. It is many, many, many things, gathering a plethora of adjectives that indicate its ability to cause astonishment and confusi...

Congratulations on your Magic Sword"! For all inquiries as to its powers and perils, please consult the Virtue Exercises Manual". However, we know new users sometimes get in over their heads. That’s w...

Asha is eight pages into the book before the words disappear. There are still hundreds of pages before the end of the book, so they must have had a record of the length of the volume, but lost the tex...

Jempo took a deep bow on the iron platform. His body flopped forward, limbs like thick braided wire. No obvious weapons in his large and rubbery hands. Little digital eyes and a bright smile that lit ...

We've published nearly 10 million words of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction. Help us write the next chapter.

Your heart stopped cold when you were walking to school in knee-high snow the morning after your parents separated. Maybe because you didn’t zip that padded snowsuit all the way up and your fur scarf ...

Asha is eight pages into the book before the words disappear. There are still hundreds of pages before the end of the book, so they must have had a record of the length of the volume, but lost the tex...

Ánar’s bootheels echoed on the iron floor. What a groundbreaking honor this ceremony was for a landless tenant like him—joining old house Veivilkas, of the wolf. Such an honor that it made him leaden ...

We've published nearly 10 million words of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction. Help us write the next chapter.

We've published nearly 10 million words of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction. Help us write the next chapter.

They didn’t want either of us to live this long. Sucks for them—we’re good at living in spite. We’re good at surviving, at fighting, at never stopping. Today is the last day we exist in spite of Comma...

Sui grunted as she straightened her back, digging her shoulder up into Taxue’s belly. The Zheng’s hind legs dragged awkwardly on the sand, trembling as the paws knuckled, the sudden weight on Sui push...

We've published nearly 10 million words of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction. Help us write the next chapter.

In The Before Days, Tim was a fellow procurer of dreams. He made a good living frequenting rooftop parties amid aging tech bros in fur-clad vests where mangosteen juices were mixed and silent discos r...

If every effort to bring down your child’s fever is unsuccessful and the doctors cannot diagnose anything wrong with her, then you should seek other means to alleviate her health. Before you help her ...

We've published nearly 10 million words of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction. Help us write the next chapter.

I wasn’t even two blocks into the Tumbledown when the walker’s nav crystal started fuzzing out. She veered left like a scavver drunk on coolant, and I knew I was in trouble. I tried sweet-talking her ...

You’re eighteen. Your fairy godmother just fired you, because after three balls, the prince has grown bored with you. Tonight you stepped on his foot during a gavotte. “If you’d been cleverer,” the fa...

ALT: Jack Nicholson's Evil Smile

“What do you mean the nanobots formed a union??” I asked the lawyer, biting my thumbnail. It’s an old habit, kept up well after I got the “Pro Nano Blitz Package,” as the ad called it. A muscular man...

“God” is not the word I’d use. But it is the only one that suffices. There are all kinds of gods: the old and the new; the useful, the useless; the capricious and the dependable; the wrathful and the ...

We live in politically combustible times, when social media posts ignite wars and half of the Western world’s populace seems determined to usher in an apocalypse if only to spite their perceived enemi...

There is a place that doesn’t exist. Or rather, the hotel exists only in the moments where existence itself hesitates: between one time zone and the next, between the breath then the decision, between...