Almost as one, the runners leap from the shelter roof. When the maglev leaves the station, they'll be on top of it, heading for the labyrinthine transfer station beneath the eye of the ancient, dec…

I saw her clearly, then: beautiful and terrible, ancient and radical, a goddess as much as any human can be. Killing a hexapedal carnivore with a hand-made spear, hiding for two days from a giant a…

Every time a warlord found me, intent on my becoming their blunt instrument, a mismatched armada followed shortly after—some squabbling coalition of assorted ally species, determined to save …

Living with the harpy presented certain difficulties. Her feathers clogged the shower drain, and the smell of unsavory meats cooked over chemical fires drifted from her room. She screamed profanity…

"Little things get little gods. It's only natural."

Nobody pays attention to a slump-backed brownish girl with droopy-lidded eyes. She's got all the genes that make her look Less Human, according to the Important powers that be.

The government was busy drinking. The lights were always blinking and going out in various parts of town. “Neighborhood’s winking up at God,” my grandmother used to say on nights like that. “But yo…

“They fly very swiftly, and prey upon the wing, being of great use to mankind, in clearing the air of innumerable little flies.” —Chambers Cyclopedia.

If she’d asked anyone out in the town, they would have happily told her the town is always empty and the hotel is always full, because those who pay for a night don’t always rise in the morning. Bu…

When Nina first met Owl-with-a-capital-O, harbinger of death, destruction, and despair, He resembled Athene cunicularia, a wee burrower.

I didn't tell my brother that we'd been eating our father's cremains until a few days had passed. I know Ben well enough to know that he needs to be eased into things.

In the old stories, strangers at the door could be disguised gods, so you had to invite them in. It was a sin to turn away a guest. Atithi devo bhava. Sanskrit: the guest is God.

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

"I can guess his goddamn origin: Disaffected rich kid. Fled America and trained with mystical Eastern warriors. Soon became the best—one year at ninja camp is always enough time for a gringo …

I was never brave or mad enough to fly from a bridge. I should never have been mad enough to eat that apple.

That morning, at great personal risk, Stephen's waffle iron attempted to tell him something.

This is the original timeline. You know, the one all of us came from. So we can’t do anything to it, or we won’t be born to invent time travel. We can only meddle with other timelines. This is the original timeline. We’re trying to fix things. Unfortunately for you, if we ever do manage …

The witch said, “I will give you what you want. All you have to do is wear through seven pairs of shoes.” “Which shoes?” she asked. “Oh, any. But the number is important.” The first pair, she was wearing that day in the woods: red Keds. In them, she would ride her bike down the …

I’m trying to piss against a wall when the vampire bites me. Trying because drunk-me can barely hold a glass, much less maneuver a limp prosthetic cock. My attacker holds me like he did on the dance floor, one arm wrapped around my chest, this time digging into my ribs. I struggle against his supernatural …

Lacuna is an old city, and it wears its years badly.

Nur remembered a paragraph from one of Tirosh's poems, from the single book he published, two years before the twentieth century came to an end: "The morning rises: another train station…"

I have outlived my parents and my little brother. My memory isn't what it used to be.

But he’d never been just an arm’s length away from a spaceship before, the way he was now. And that’s why he felt like crying.

Tory writes, draws, and codes in Los Angeles. Her fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Drabblecast, and PseudoPod, and her art has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex, and Spellbound. I can&#82…

Should you chose to stay, / make sure to adjust your life expectancy accordingly.