Stories

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io The first contestant worth mentioning wore manticore fur. The fibers, a deep shade of gunmetal, tapered to points of polished basalt. Ruffs of black cockatrice feathers bounced at his collar and cuffs as he swaggered down an aisle lined with twisted… Strange Horizons - The Skinwalkers Ball By Hammond Diehl, Art by Helen Mask via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ITWze9

by Michelle Geoga Penelope was already thinking having some babies would make her feel better then she found one at the Kmart, a sleepy one with long dark lashes, tiny fist balls clen…

By now you’ve probably seen “Cat Person”, that New Yorker story going around about a young woman in her early twenties dating a shitty dude in his mid-thirties. via Pocket

Author: Brooks C. Mendell Day jobbers think offices clean themselves. They show up in the morning at their desks, put down their gourmet coffee on coasters their kids made, flick the mouse and check the Inbox without wondering who swept the floors o…

Beneath a stark winter hue that washes but never cleans a young woman lays naked, the cold winds filthy besom scratching as it dusts her with crystals that flurry as ash. The upward gaze that meets it is as vacant as it is piercing. via Pocket

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A Devil’s Trade | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2PX4o1t

The Sinking of Stones. – The MDQ via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2RktGa3

NASA died two hundred and three nautical miles above the planet Mars. It died when Daniel Chen, the last surviving crew member of Pilgrim 2, ran out of breathable atmosphere. At that point, Chen pulled himself close to the nearest camera lens. via P…

Farren opened the door to the bailiffs and let them in. They pushed into the apartment wordlessly, and began to itemise her former life, ticking boxes on clipboards while they opened drawers and rifled shelves. via Pocket

I’m fourteen the first time I bargain with the indigo snake. I find it basking on the rocks that are piled against the south side of our house, a lazily drawn line of black, like a cursive letter that has gotten away from itself. It lifts its head a…

Tribute - Lightspeed Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ytSJAH

The Zeppelidrone hovered soundlessly outside the window blinking its countdown, indicating less than twenty minutes to make our decision to sign the contract. via Pocket

The Astronaut Tier – Jonathan Laidlow – Metaphorosis Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2yzgB5U

Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake - Lightspeed Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2O5XzZG

I’m sorry I waited so long to tell you this, but I really hate your vacation cabin. Everything about it creeps me out. The sound of crickets at night makes my skin crawl. via Pocket

Use the photograph above as the inspiration for your flash fiction story. Write whatever comes to mind (no sexual, political, or religious stories, jokes, or commentary, please) and after you PROOFREAD it, submit it as your entry in the comments sec…

“London is ours! Zero-ing in on infamy!” announced Haggard Elsson, winking to the air steward and striding purposefully from the First Class exit from BA0171 with his Executive Assistant Freya trailing him, awkwardly wheeling both of their suitcases…

Paris is a city of many things — lights, sounds, whispers… and cats. Cats haunt modern Paris like fur-clad ghosts — whiskered faces through window panes, gray mousers plying their trade in alleyways, rooftop cats and cats who sleep and dream curled …

I let the children play with the lions because I decided that it was part of their education to examine life from another planet. This was after I ordered a box of domestic cats but many of my students, the boys in particular, didn’t know their own …

Grampa Don hated houseflies. To hear him talk you’d think there weren’t no flies in Chicago, but we visited once and there were flies a’plenty, I assure you. But when Grampa stayed with us he was forever complaining about flies in the house. via Poc…

Her fingers are young but they feel wrapped in the heft of ancient mountains as she writes. Her nails are blotched with ink but she remembers the taste of the paint, that which she mined from beneath their tips as she thought with the edge of her te…

The sign outside Hello Design Coffin Works read, FOR SALE: FANTASY COFFINS. But the little girl imagined more ominous words floating just below the other letters, “Ababuo Need Not Apply.” via Pocket

Bg’lkk Ut’rk had found the blue jewel with its eccentric inhabitants and decided he wouldn’t make contact. via Pocket

PodCastle 545: The Aunties Return the Ocean

Author : Q. B. Fox Simon looked up from what he was doing, and even in the dim light of the rack mounted servers I recognise the pinched expression. via Pocket

Marshal was a photographer, an anachronist and a killer. Before we met, he hadn’t bothered to iCap any of the women he had finished with: he used an old camera, the print kind. That’s a throwaway fact- an affectation- for someone who isn’t a killer.…

My lips are so bitten up it’s like my mouth just chewed its way out of my face. I think my mother is about to tell me about the divorce between her and my father. Guess my age, with my parents getting divorced. You’re wrong, add ten years. via Pocket

Mary Kay Bonfante is the Readers’ Choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. The winning entry is decided by the popular vote and rewarded with a special feature here today. (In the case of a tie, the writer who submitted an ent…

We dash around a long curve that should get us out of their sights for a while. “In all those old films we watched, fighting the evil empire involved a lot less running away from angry warriors with frighteningly accurate weapons. via Pocket