Amaya sits among empty armchairs and fading curtains in a room brightened by plastic flowers. On each wall there’s a still life, and a grey carpet covers the floor. She stares at her yellowing copy of Bleak House until the words become black insects… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Strange Horizons - The Weather Dancer By Aisha Phoenix via Instapaper https://ift.tt/33d7NAr

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io 1.  The first time you meet a murderer, you are in kindergarten. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io “It makes it hard to give good advice, you know?” The air in the occult store is close, dim. Patchouli coats Cassandra’s lungs, familiar as disdain. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io CONTENT WARNING: “There is the past and the not-past,” Heron said, blood dripping from their arm onto the nightingale floor. “Which is this?” “The not-past, you idiot.” Dog grunted as he peeled back Heron’s sleeve. via Pocket

It was during the time the Angel lived with us. I could no longer bear sweeping the feathers. I didn’t mind the intoxicating celestial scent his nesty-nasty room exhaled. It only started to bother me when I took a guy home to spend the night and a f… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

He promised he’d keep his heart, but circumstances have changed. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

On a scalding morning of 1983, father and son walked side by side. They were similar in many ways—light olive skin, mousy hair, a thin nose—but only the father wore glasses, carrying a heavy binder under his arm. “If there’s something your old man c… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

When that summer ended, Brazilians felt nothing but joy. Flying cars were finally here, and as nobody could afford one, they happily rented them, in the colours of their favourite brands. The flying cars drove themselves; pedestrians now had the str… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

Aboard the ghost ship Nine Lives there are the living, the dead, and a great many cats. And Jourdain, who likes to sleep in the observation nest, body caught somewhere between ship and stars—between everything. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Strange Horizons - The Sloppy Mathematics of Half-Ghosts By Charles Payseur via Instapaper https://ift.tt/30RPfDu

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. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Strange Horizons - The Great Mandini and the Dead Man's Hand By Kevin Wabaunsee via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2VDW3nc

That’s his name. That might be him, so I may as well say it. I know he promised, and I promised, that we’d only come here together. That in this place, we’d never have to be alone. But she’s right, if that’s him, maybe nothing’s broken. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Strange Horizons - Promise Me This Is Ours By Omar William Sow, Art by Sarah Gonzales via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2MZN5fV

Osnat went back to talk to the dybbuk again. Usually she liked walking up from the subway station, so close the pulsating holiness of 770. Different though Osnat’s own traditions were, the pull of the Lubavitch synagogue was impossible to ignore. vi… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Strange Horizons - Whom My Soul Loves By Rivqa Rafael via Instapaper https://ift.tt/33XByFb

I should tell you about the gods, yes? Good setting for it. Here in the desert, hunger and thirst sharpen the soul. Sharpens it enough to poke right through the side of your mind to let in the second sight. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io CONTENT WARNING: when my father reprograms my mother { my mother becomes unbreakable    angles like a subway map    glitter bubblegum steelhard cyberwoman    a Galatea in Python too cold to share a bed with she boneless titanium I can’t do a portrai…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Lyra’s judges were not Anubis or Michael but three stern figures whose faces shifted from those of the fates, to the muses, to the musical judges on reality television. Their chambers rose high and dark and empty from the endless sand. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io There is a clamor of ancient lovers hiding under my hat. They sit or pace impatient, whittle bits of me with tiny knives also whittled from bits of me, and I let them. They each came to me, as lovers do, in the vast before—with small hands upturned,… Strange Horizons - All Muddle By Sionnain Buckley via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2GleGFN

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io At the mathematical center of Dorothy’s father’s RV, at its golden ratio curl, there is a tarot card pinned to the corkboard. The High Priestess; she has been there longer than Dorothy can remember. Worn at her edges, drawn in lines of gold and whit… Strange Horizons - Hunting the Viper-King By Kathryn Harlan via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2NlY7Qf