Evan is suddenly coughing up bones, like, A LOT of bones, but that’s not even in the top ten strangest things that have happened to him since he moved into his new (possibly haunted) duplex . . .
I was finishing the last of my nightly coffee when the nineteen-seventies twins approached my table and asked me to bear witness to their disappearance. This was not an unusual request at Cafe Liminalité, being the locale of patrons that dreamed too much and ate too little. I, being its longest and oldest customer, had […]
The country was at just over ten thousand deaths the morning that the door appeared. On Kosmo’s phone NPR was interviewing a doctor with a nasal voice about the need for social distancing, while Kosmo himself collected empty cans from around his home office. They were everywhere. Walls of recyclable cans dominated his room. Just […]
How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub - Uncanny Magazine
“Ambition!” Trevor emphasized, rapping knuckles hard on the wood table. “That is what makes the great men!” He took a satisfied swallow from his mug. Across from him, Barnaby put down the daily he’d been reading and sipped from his own beer. Pulling out a handkerchief to dab froth from his lips, he scratched thoughtfully […]
What does wanderlust mean when you’re a ghost? Find out by joining Darcie Little Badger’s wonderfully intrepid Corey and Jimena on the road. ~ Julian and Fran, April 2, 2023 Those Hitchhiking Kids By Darcie Little Badger They hadn’t died while hitchhiking, and ghosts couldn’t own a car, but Corey and Jimena shared the condition of wanderlust, so something had to be done. In high school, they’d ditch class to bus-hop through Houston, losing themselves in mazes of hot streets. Death hadn’t extinguished the urge to travel without aim, although it made the process trickier, more frustrating.
The Care and Training of Hellhounds, by Cynthia Zhang
“Darling,” Hades says one evening as the two of them are curled up on the couch, “I love you, but we can’t live like this.” “Hmm?” Persephone glances up from her Macbook. At her feet, Perennial Gra…
Strange Horizons - In the Late December By Greg van Eekhout
Santa goes down the list, pushing the team relentlessly across the black. Little girl after little girl, little boy after little boy, absent, vanished into the emptiness of the old, dying, dead uni…
People have no idea how much of themselves they can slough off. Every night, I clean oodles of ttae—exfoliated skin cells, rolled up into crescent doughs. They lap about in the Hot Springs; merge into foamy scums. I skim them with my net; run new water through the pools. When the baths brim again with […]
The Worms that Ate the Universe - Uncanny Magazine
The planet of the worms is a cold, barren, sunless place. The worms do not think. They feel nothing but hunger, and so they eat. They eat through the planet’s surface. They eat through the planet’s molten core. Over time, the planet grows speckled and spongelike, riddled with tunnels and holes. But the worms don’t […]
Aden had never once forgotten his gear for bulk trash day, but he found it touching that Nura still taped a monthly reminder note on the door from the kitchen to the garage. Sweet of her to remember, given how exhausted med school had her these days. He ducked out to the garage to toss […]
Content Note: All Possible Warnings Apply click here for full note Warnings: violence, incest, cannibalism, fratricide, attempted infanticide just as in the original… Children don’t generally assume their father will abandon them to die in the snow. But under certain circumstances, they might get an inkling. If their mother had died the year before, […]