Some of the passers-by made jokes at me. Though I could not understand their language, yet I felt sure they were joking. I asked my friend, "What do they say?" "The women say that you look very man…

At close range she can be seen to be shaking, a hard tight focused trembling, not confined to the hands. She looks close to resonant frequency. Amrita wants to, somehow, by touching her with one fi…

Splöstlienne was a wasteland of thorns. Here and there, ragged yellow buds were emerging among them, but the cold winter kept them mostly bare.

Part of being a princess in the kingdom of Splöstlienne meant learning the things one might expect princesses to be taught

Later, Brother Francis would not be able to remember when it was that he first started thinking of the golden thing as a man—possibly when it blanched, braced itself against its restraints, and vom…

Kristian is fidgeting and asks the dreaded and inevitable question for the umpteenth time. "Mummy, Ma, are we there yet?" "Almost there, sweetpea," says Maarit, sharing a grimace with me. I’m…

At first, the murder is universally mistaken for a run-of-the-mill political assassination.

The seventh repetition almost played out like all the others. A different person filled Luis' place, but despite the evidence before my eyes, I could only see my idiot husband.

Her feet feel unfamiliar in her plain white washekongs, the tennis shoes she used to wear so often, before her world fell in. Now she only wears two sides of shoes when she needs to fake normal.

Marbles, reading glasses, fichas de Monopolio, a key, all cemented onto the crumbling old plaster, maybe eight feet across. Only when he took a step back could he see it formed the shape of a woman…

Jeffries says he's worried about the retrovirus. I think he just doesn't like Matthews, doesn't want him hanging around. Truth is, myself and the kids excepted, Jeffries likes cattle and dogs more …

I wriggle, delighting in all of these things in me. I want to digest them all.

@Brain Harvest: “What Makes You Tick” by David Steffen. @Strange Horizons: “Middle Aged Weirdo in a Cadillac” by George R. Galuschak @Author’s site: “The Vile De…

Want these delicious links emailed to you once a week? Sign up for the Free SF/F/H Fiction Newsletter What’s special about today’s free fiction? Strange Horizons has a story from Charli…

By Élisabeth Vonarburg 30 June 2014 This story was selected for Strange Horizons by this week's repr...

By Jessica Barber 2 January 2012 The last song and dance number that Izzie Valdes performs in the El...

By Michelle Ann King, read by Anaea Lay 2 June 2014 Direct link: Tomorrow, We'll Go Yak Herding (mp3...

By K.M. Ferebee 4 June 2012 Part 1 of 2 There was a ghost in the hospital. They had told Keats this....

22 March 2010 Jaima Coleman isn't eating dessert tonight because they're cutting Duncan's wings off....

29 March 2010 I am Somadeva. I was once a man, a poet, a teller of tales, but I am long dead now. I ...

5 April 2010 After I opened my eyes they dressed me in silk. A bone-white gown slipped over my head ...

17 May 2010 What puzzles them, I can tell, is my control. I sit poised in my pew. No screaming or wa...

25 April 2005 2180 A.D./Stilt City, Eastern U.S.A. She was a conspiracy of perceptions: an enclosure...

22 August 2005 When I was little, I had the run of the lab. Sometimes I got into trouble. Once, I us...

15 August 2005 Mare didn't get forever. She had barely two more years before she failed a physical. S...

21 November 2005 Part 2 of 2 Read Part 1 here "You have problems last night?" Kancheli asked at brea...