The first time your mother swallows you whole you don’t really see it coming.

The king had already enslaved two grinders for failing him. I didn't want to be the third.

The calendar indicates that it is the tail end of this interminable winter. The snow—up to the woman’s iridescent, striped knee socks—blocking her old school’s gym entrance says otherwise. The ritu…

The sick man is buried in the cold sand with only his head and his left arm showing. He is dressed in a pressure suit and looks like a man from Mars. He can hear the pounding of surf and the soft s…

"Hey," I blurted out. "I think your camera's broken."

She winked. “I think I have something for you,” she said.

“Marriage is like an offer. It compels one to exist in two different worlds. Can you really handle that much trouble?”

And then, nothing was important anymore. So he decided to become an agitator, to disturb the peace.

The dragon orders an iced caramel mocha, / tapping her foot impatiently / while she waits in line.

chatting with each other about the dark weather, stuttering in their time loops

“You must not tell anyone,” she said. “I am one of those that cannot die, the Bakirshi.”

I'm sixteen when George and I figure out the aliens will pay to watch us fight.

There is a hidden transcript, and one of its secrets is this: try to unforget World War Zero.

Loved it RT @bogiperson: today in #diversestories is Never the Same by Polenth Blake (@Polenth) in @strangehorizons - http://t.co/YZX9K3RK0h

“@bogiperson: today on #diversestories The Truth About Owls by @tithenai in @strangehorizons http://t.co/fXhtKkEzH9” I'm hooked!

I should tell you about the gods, yes? Good setting for it. Here in the desert, hunger and thirst sharpen the soul.

Osnat went back to talk to the dybbuk again.

Two in the morning in the booth of an all-night diner a block off Santa Monica Boulevard, and I was trying to convince the Great Mandini to tell me his secrets.

Aboard the ghost ship Nine Lives there are the living, the dead, and a great many cats.

I keep asking myself why didn’t I stop them. I was there. I was the only sane one, right? Personally unaffected by the tragedy. That’s what the judge said, anyway, even though I was never prosecute…

"Before Dog, Heron had never seen someone remove their own heart."

“People don’t want to know the future,” the tarot reader goes on. She pulls off her headscarf, grimaces, reties it over hair tacky with sweat. “They want to talk through their troubles. They want y…

Most people don’t encounter their first murderer so young. Most people won’t meet the Fermi estimation of the national per-person lifetime average of thirty-six murderers, either.

Her right hand undulates in front of her like a rippling wave. She raises the other hand above her head and with fluttering fingers, circles her wrist down to her waist. Outside a gentle wind stirs…

“We don’t know each other now. But we’re going to meet, and one day, we’ll be together. Actually, maybe that’s the real beginning.”