The first time you saw her, she was getting change from the machine in the lavandería; copper and nickel clacked against her metal palms, a rain of clicks pricking your eardrums. via Pocket
The Proper Motion of Extraordinary Stars, by Kali Wallace | Shimmer
Smoke rose from the center of Asunder Island, marring a sky so blue and so clear it made Aurelia’s eyes ache. The sailors had been insisting for days she would see the Atrox swooping and turning overhead, if only she watched long enough, but there w…
This story contains scenes dealing with suicide and violence relating to infants, which some readers may find upsetting. You’ve denied the hunger for so long that when you transform tonight, it hurts more than usual. You twist all the way round, fee…
In the Rustle of Pages, by Cassandra Khaw | Shimmer
Li Jing looks up from the knot of lavender yarn in her hands, knitting needles ceasing their silvery chatter. The old woman smiles, head cocked. via Pocket
Painted Grassy Mire, by Nicasio Andres Reed | Shimmer
Heat like a hand at her throat then a breeze kicked up from Lake Borgne to swat Winnie sweetly across the face. One of those breezes every hour. A muddy, warm thing that got her through the day. What would life be without a breeze off the lake? Noth…
We are crows, circling round the wake of death, black wings silent as we glide, waiting, waiting. The big one’s gonna hit. Any second now. Iv’s thoughts coat mine like oil, slide away, always so clear in the moment but impossible to hold on to. Iv, …
We Lilies of the Valley, by Sonja Natasha | Shimmer
If Yvonne presses her cheek to the thick window of the space station, and cranes her neck just so, she can see a crescent slice of Earth, marbled in desert. She traces what she can see of the western coast of Mexico. via Pocket
For my grandfather, Frederick. Rest well, Gramp. Before the border wall, we scatter. Dandelions. The nanomachines grind us down and we float up and through the cracks, molecule to molecule, like holding hands. Leena hesitates, is left behind. She st…
He descended on the town like a saint sent from Dark Heaven six-guns shining like twin torches in his hands, down to the border where we had our battle on. Summers are always the worst in Sunblooders Stand, as the scale-folk grow riled earlier in th…
Itself at the Heart of Things, by Andrea Corbin | Shimmer
“The acts of life have no beginning or end. Everything happens in a completely idiotic way. That is why everything is alike.” — Tristan Tzara, 1922 On the floor, I hiked my skirts up and began to disassemble myself, starting with my left knee. via P…
Asterion The difference between you and the humans, when it comes right down to it, is not in the protrusions of gnarled bone and horn that jut from the apex of your skull, or in the coarse fur that contrasts so spectacularly with the other parts of…
En la Casa de Fantasmas, by Brian Holguin | Shimmer
Everyone knows about La Bruja. They say she lives somewhere down in the Avenues south of Eagle Rock. She is a tiny thing, short and round. Always dressed in black no matter the weather or time of year. Draped in mourning, they say, like La Llorona. …
The Weight of Sentience, by Naru Dames Sundar | Shimmer
The bullet fire drew a boundary between Masak and me and the rest of our brethren, laser tracers demarcating the distinction between safety and capture. While we curled up small and invisible underneath the leaking truck, those who were not so lucky…
Raise-the-Dead Cobbler, by Andrea Corbin | Shimmer
The air was muggy, a heatwave burning through the spring, on the night that we met to conjure two people out of almost nothing at all. None of us could’ve done it without the others, and none of us would’ve dared, except Mason said please and I said…
Madu is a satchel who is in love with Eliza, who is a woman and who is also a princess. Sometimes Madu thinks of herself as a girl, and sometimes she thinks of himself as a boy, and at other times all she thinks is that she is just another thing tha…
An Incomplete Catalogue of Miraculous Births, or, Secrets of the Uterus Abscondita, by Rebecca Campbell | Shimmer
Mary Toft is in the garden on an August morning rich with bees. Five months along, her belly presses against the rough linen of her skirt while one hand curves protectively around it, half support, half caress. via Pocket
I try to take a picture of the eerie. The power’s out, so I’m like, okay, standing outside the Pump n’ Stuff, looking at the gas pumps. My last customer was twenty minutes ago. Down the street by the McDonald’s, the black veiny power lines seizure u…
Faint Voices, Increasingly Desperate, by Anya Johanna DeNiro | Shimmer
The silk threads of grief and time snap and spin away from the black looms, but all Freia wants to do is go back to Vienna. Dozens of women work the looms in the magnanery. Hands fly as the threads spin out of the boiling cocoons. Freia doesn’t work…
Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy : A Vastness by Bo Balder
Yoshi scythes the lotus seedpod with orange-slickered arms and tosses them in the harvesting bag on her back. The blue sky overhead reflects ominously in the still ponds below. She reaches out and cuts the same perfect pod again. This means she’s in…
Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy : The Cedar Grid by Sara Saab
Jassim is giving chase and he shouldn’t be. Beneath the flapping robes of Jassim’s running target, a deadly corset bristling with titanium circuitry flashes into view. via Pocket
There were fourteen clean steps from any path, manmade and peeling the shrubbery of the mountain, to the spots where the Virgin Marys would remain. via Pocket
Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy : In the Queue for the Worldship Munawwer by Sara Saab
I hope you’ll forgive the whimsy of this report. I’ve held my silence my entire life, and there are many things I deserve to say to you. I know it’s a breach of protocol, but in a sense, so was I. And there may not be another chance. via Pocket