Stories

Author: Mark Renney The island is getting smaller, but those who reside in the Tower are in denial. Hiding behind the steel rafters and columns and the reinforced sheets of glass that comprise the walls of their homes, they won’t accept that a very real danger lurks beyond their windows. The occupants of the Tower, […]

Author: Brooks C. Mendell “Where is she?” asked Dr. Nemur, holding her glasses in place while looking under a chair. “Relax, Doc,” said Burt. “It’s only a mouse. We’ll find her.” “Only a mouse?” said Nemur. “Her frontal cortex packs more punch than your bird brain.” “I get it,” said Burt. “I’m not your type.” […]

They say if you take the old scarecrow out back, jam some old leaves in there to make up for some of the straw that’s fallen out, and put a jack-o-lantern on the shoulders where the head used to be…

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Abby whips her wing-tentacles about, making little ‘cracks’ of delight as a gigantic silver dinosaur walks by, its crystal eyes filled with icy fire. Every footfall causes things to shake and drinks to splash about in their cups – unless they’re being carried on the spindly spider-legged copper tables that […]

by Jillianne A. Santos Artwork by: Jillianne A. Santos MAINTAIN EYE CONTACT DURING CONVERSATIONS. People communicated with their words and body language. But the eyes spoke more than the two of the…

by Jonah Leigh E. Ramos In the beginning was just God. Nothing was with God. And God was nothing enough to create a being apart from herself. So she created you. It was one afternoon when it dawned…

by Mary Gigi Constantino (Tagalog version: Ang Huling Paglikas) Dawn was colder than usual and the scent of rain was in the air. Marga burrowed into her corner of the jeepney and pulled the hoodie …

by  Raissa Claire R. Falgui (image from Wikipedia) I saw him blundering through the forest before he saw me. Naturally. I was the goddess of Mt. Makiling and he was a mere mortal. And he was gettin…

by Dan Merais (Warning: this story involves suicide as a topic and may cause reactions in the emotionally challenged. It is recommended that in the event such emotions are triggered, please click h…

by Anne Carly Abad Webbed lines of electricity flitted across the Motherlode’s network of metal neurons. Evan thought it funny that despite all the rage about Live Vision, they were still using thu…

by Cesar Miguel Escaño Though he and his brother arrived early, Pedro felt he was late to the tournament. It was his first time to attend the National Sungka Championships, the most prestigious sun…

Nature - You must remember this.

Author: David Barber This was back in 1937, in Wheaton, Illinois, where Grote Reber built a radio telescope to track down persistent background noise that was annoying Bell Telephone Labs. The Depression still lingered and Bell wouldn’t employ him, but in his spare time Reber built a 30-foot dish in his mother’s back yard and […]

Princess Mwadi of Everfair teams up with American actress Rima Bailey on a reconnaissance mission in Egypt in an attempt to thwart the European spies intent on destabilizing Everfair and its business interests. . .

After two days of the carriage’s relentless jolting, Darya felt battered to the point of numbness.

Before she died, Ethel gave Julie a stapled packet of parchment paper, plump and noisy with seeds.

The Curator hummed as they descended to the Archive’s power core.

(Download the audio version of this story here — read by David Binks.  Story illustration by Ronnie Tucker.) Cordigan flicked his cigarette into the water. The river that bisected the city wa…

(Story illustration by Galen Dara.) I don’t expect you to believe this story.  I don’t want to believe this story.  I wish that I didn’t. All of this  happened earlier tonight — just another …

Beneath his feet lay the warm wood of the walkways. Mosquitoes buzzed around the yellow swamp flowers and spindly birch trees. The hills, overgrown with ancient pines, obscured the lake where Michael went, following a path strewn with fallen needles and gnarled roots.After swimming, he settled in the shade with one or another book picked from the sanatorium's library. Assuming that, besides him, some other space pilots also resided in...

Author: David Tam McDonald Colin gave a polite cough to start the meeting. As team leader he sat at the head of the table. Brian, the secretary, sat to his left, perusing the agenda, which was blank and absolutely not taking any minutes. Tony, Richard and Lyndsey sat facing them, all eager to begin. “I […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The squad’s sitting there having breakfast when Tommo’s head explodes. Just like that, we’re all on the deck. Except Bert. He’s still sat there noshing his way through a bacon butty. “Bert! What the frack?” He swallows before replying. “When was the last time they missed? We’re the ones who […]

He lifts the onion to the lantern’s lone light, and in it, I suddenly see: the goldwork towers and walls of the Old City; the broken bridge, jagged after a recent bombing yet still shining; rows of humble houses etched in ebullient metal; the curve and sway of the historical museum. I reach out my hand, and he drops the city into it. It feels warm in my palm.

Her family brings their best to the table and talk unreservedly in their first language. Rviv cannot keep up with the conversation. She understands the words, the phrases, but not why they make her parents laugh or grimace. They reference a place Rviv has never seen and a history she has not lived. The stranger and her parents commiserate about living in such a strange country. Together they laugh at the way the Cuialo smile with their teeth and eat meat with their hands. Her parents wait with excruciating patience to ask what news of home.

This was the mood the second time my late guest arrived. They were still dressed as a witch but this time wore a cloak of ambiguous cut that masked it from a casual observer; the slashing diagonal weave might be a witch’s style, or it could be the even horizontal line a breath-person would wear turned askew in the weather. Something in the ambiguity called to me, an enticing possibility, though I was still unwaveringly comfortable folding my clothes into the straight hems and smooth lines of second-childhood. I nodded as they entered but waited several moments for them to settle before approaching their table.

“That would be a fine thing, to hear that fiddle played as it should be,” the ferryman said, mostly to hisself. He cast an eye over the dark expanse of river, dotted with white ice cakes. “You sure, jacks? A trip like this, it rarely takes you where you’re planning.”

"Grandpa, you don't have to." Dovan's little hand rests inside his. Cyfris closes his fingers around it. "I know I said before that I wanted you to tell everything, but I changed my mind. You don't need to tell this part."

“We found something,” Matias began. He had rehearsed what he would say and was determined now to watch their expressions. To see if this was a revelation for them—or if they already knew. “We’re expanding the palace kitchens, putting in a new hearth and tables. The builders knocked out a wall—turns out it was a closet that had been sealed up. In the closet was a body.”

The Poet Laureate was fetched from his retirement in a lighthouse on the far shore of the Founder Mer to compose a song of eighty-six interlocked stanzas like steps on a stairway spiraling down into a cool dim quiet. But on the forty-seventh stanza of its recitation, the Governor squinted into the space over the Poet's shoulder and said, "listen, any deeper and we shall hear the words those beasts sing as they pass" and demanded that the previous stanzas be read in reverse; "back to the surface," he said.

27. Parsifal confessed to me that she has never dreamed of Valis. Not once. In her youth, she learned of the city in a book: a philosophical dialogue where a poet, a knight, a musician, and a madman argue about the nature of reality while awaiting the arrival of a fifth person. Near the end, the madman recounts the story of Valis, which the others think is nonsense. Parsifal disagreed, and the city quickly became an obsession (she herself used the word 'obsession'). She said all this while pacing back and forth, refusing to look me in the face until the end.