He climbs the spiraling stairs. Bowtie dangling from his fist, he climbs and sits atop the castle wall, where the torch-dotted city folds to dark shapes. Below, vastness, empty, as he feels sitting here. His feet are heavy, pulling downward. He does…

In the cool of the morning, I walk between my rows of peppers, brushing my fingers against the glossy leaves of Anaheims, Brazilian Starfishes, and Carolina Reapers. I grow peppers the way my mother and grandmother before me did—I grow them for the …

Molly was twenty-four when she woke up one morning, discovered she was already dead, and shortly thereafter asked me to bury her alive. Our paths had diverged after Ole Miss: she got a house and a husband amongst the ancestral oaks of Oxford, while …

When it comes to life in general, I’m not sure I can agree with her. I like comfortable. I like easy. I prefer not to have terrible things happen. I have to admit, however, that I tend to lean toward the strange. My little world is filled with oddit…

Your obsession with fossils. That silly tool belt… What were you going to do, brush dust off me? Stab me with your tiny shovel? via Pocket

K’loth bends his face to the basin and washes. The first washing of the day is for the Gods. One is the Goddess. Two is the God. Three is the Shadow. The water drips from pale blue tentacles above his mouth that move in the motions of prayers he has…

You are ten years unborn on the evening of the day that will soon become known as G-day. I am washing dishes in the kitchen of our newly bought terrace, cleaning the residue of dinner from our finest boot-sale porcelain. via Pocket

Now Watch as Belinda Unmakes the World - Flash Fiction Online via Instapaper https://ift.tt/1VJHUkx

1. THE BRIEF

Editor’s note: This is the second story we’re publishing in Nino’s “It Happened To Me” series. You can read the first one here.

She’ll bring out the best and the worst you can be

Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of Black Like Them, a Dilemma Magazine special report by senior reporter Matt Disher. To listen to the full audi...

What makes a god a monster?

Gran never did like it when I used the Winchester to deal with dragons — so I went and did a damn fool thing and set out to hunt them in the dead of night. I...

“If you’re darker than warm beige we don’t recommend using this unit to visit the past prior to 2150. Only go into the recent past, or into the future.” The ...

The ghost in my attic is Margaret, but she lets me call her Margie. She was seventy-six years old when she died, and now that she’s a ghost she sits in her r...

The Get-Get Man travels at night, sharp as a scalpel, dark as soot. He cuts through the yards and streets, slicing and taking what doesn’t make way. They say...

Pale skin, poreless. Plastic polymer. Eyes too big. Nose too straight. Black-wire lashes. Mouth like an open wound, boiling with insect larvae. She’s been de...

When the Xiongs’ only son died, instead of calling the crematorium and arranging for a funeral, the family came to me.

As long as I eat, I heal. Today, it’s my rotted right arm that needs it. I can smell her through the door. Cocoa butter. Jojoba oil. Jasmine. Both her and th...

“First, you must cross my palm with silver.” Moira cackles every time she says it, which is every time she sees me. It wasn’t funny the first time. I guess s...

5 Reasons I Have To Break Up With Nia (Zoraida Tun’s journal)

Selected by guest editor Daniel José Older

Lady Fantastic died yesterday. She was one of the classics, one of the first to don her cape and soar over the skyline, one of that golden generation who ins...

They brought you back because they want something from you. Maybe one day they will bring people back because they can or because it’s the right thing to do ...

Her ship thundered into the ground, and Caroline stumbled out from the wreckage into a bright haze of ivy and trees. No one had set foot on Earth since the t...

The machine has been finished for a month. Her hull is still shiny, the locks are still engaged and haven’t been opened since I finished building her.

“I’ve lost my parents,” Rita told the man in the many-colored hat.

I hunched forward against the whipping wind, my climate hood blowing back over and over, face coated by spitting rain. It slithered down my neck as I walked ...

Last winter, my veins held only blood and not an army of nanobots. You were four, and I thought my fatigue was a normal side effect of parenthood. Surely the...