He was fiddling with the vial his mother had given him. He had considered throwing it on the ground and smashing it in front of her before he left, just to prove how determined he was. But something in him had stayed his hand. via Pocket

Do you know the tale of the armless maiden? In most tales, it is only her hands she loses. If I were the sister of a king, I could claim that I cut off my own arm so that my brother would not want to marry me. via Pocket

She was alone the first time I saw her, at a table in the student union, drinking hot coffee with the same furious intent I’d seen on the upside-down faces of frat bros with rubber taps in their mouths. Jesus, I thought. Her throat must be on fire. …

The artisan hesitates, about to turn the page of the sketchbook given to her by, she is realizing, the most important client she might ever have. “Not alone,” she says, and her own honesty surprises her. “Most of the design, what you’re asking, it’s…

via Pocket

Night. A night like any other in Starhollow: the headlights of cars, small and lost between the skyscrapers; the smell of hydromel and wine wafting from those few bars still open; and above me, the distant light of the stars, a constant reminder of …

The convoy appeared in a cloud of dust against the Martian dawn atop the eastern hills. Sister Hecuba had just connected the catheter to its port over her right breast. via Pocket

The Dark Lord Mogrash descended to his deepest basement, below the lower dungeons, below the magma reactors, below the well-warded and unquiet family crypts. via Pocket

He says: You’re cold as clay this morning. Where are your socks? Your toes are cold as the silver snout of Old Catch, darling. Coffee’s brewed. Old Catch: A trickster figure, not quite the Devil. Sometimes a psychopomp. One of his common mischiefs i…

A silk merchant travelling through heavy rain in his wagon offers a lift to a black-clad man named Erroi. He accepts, and after they travel together for some time longer, their road is blocked by a fallen tree. This diversion has been caused by two …

CONTENT WARNING: “The gothic is at heart a romance between a girl and a house.” – Jo Walton “Of course it's not like that these days,” she said, and twitched the velvet curtain shut. “Between men and women.” I had fully understood. via Pocket

Matthias browses through his library of worlds. In one of them, a little girl named Sophie is shivering on her bed, her arms wrapped around a teddy bear. It is night. She is six years old. She is crying, as quietly as she can. via Pocket

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

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

I am dying of the war, though not in it. Such is the nature of wars. A person doesn’t have to die in battle to be killed by a war. A person doesn’t even have to be a soldier to die of one. Wars have always been slow killers as well as quick. The war …

(Content Note for emotional abuse and mentions of sexual abuse.) For Shirley Jackson and Charles Dickens “This is a true-crime tale?” Two reporters sharing the shuttle with us, and of course I got the one who hadn’t done her homework. I suppose I should have been flattered that they were there—a Broadway musical spun off the …

Osnat went back to talk to the dybbuk again.

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

After the memorial service, Phoebe Morris returned to the beachfront townhouse where her mother had lived for the last twenty years, and prepared to cope. There was nothing of Mother’s that she partic…

(Content Note for use of racist slur.) John Wood boarded the Gracie-Ella ahead of the crew. He carried his sea chest on his shoulder. In a satchel slung low on his hip were his tools and the three thi…

I don’t exit this world; it’s the only way I sleep. One of two boys in the darkness, hanging our feet off the ledge, staring at nothing.

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

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.

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