Blood pulls up in a near-new new Caddy, heaven white, with flesh-colored guts and the white walls on his tires thick as rulers side by side. via Pocket
It must have been 9th grade for our history class was cancelled again, an indeterminate kind of “cancel” because it was Perestroika in 1989 in the USSR and our history textbooks were suddenly out of date. 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…
Dax found his usual seat in the back corner of the cafeteria and unpacked his lunch. He laid out a sandwich, a can of iced coffee, and an orange on the table in front of him, then fished a lock-blade knife from his jacket pocket and set about peelin…
The Right Place to Start a Family - Lightspeed Magazine
Yuna searched the colonization vids for a world Oliver would find appealing. Of the half dozen people she was dating, he was her favorite, and the only one she’d really want to bring with her for the centuries-long trip to the colonies. There were s…
Wild Bill “The Buck” Williams rode into town for a drink, but he stayed for the pretty boys. He was as mean as they said but not so tall: a lean, hard man with a rocky face and a broad mustache, slicked at both sides from a tin of fat he kept in a s…
Beneath Ceaseless Skies - The Root Cellar by Maria Haskins
Grandma’s root cellar looks like a barrow in the gloaming: door facing north, yawning wide beneath the hill. Lintel so low it makes me crouch, threshold so high it makes me stumble. You might have laughed at that if you could see me, brother. I wish…
E, my 15-year-old daughter, has invited me to her therapy session. We sit side-by-side on a couch across from her psychiatrist. Her doctor stands and billows a sun yellow yarn blanket overhead, letting it fall on E’s lap where it’s tucked securely a…
Escape Pod 637: At the Village Vanguard (Ruminations on Blacktopia) - Escape Pod
In this, the 25th anniversary of the founding of the lunar colony, First World (colloquially called Blacktopia by its residents), The Indianapolis Recorder, the nation’s oldest-surviving African-American newspaper, continues its series re-visiting k…
Echoes Through the Cavern of the Iris Black | 365tomorrows
I found a way into tomorrow but when I got there it didn’t care. Though I burrowed deep through caverns cold and waited patiently for the drugs to take hold this newest of days it took no heed, no, for me this day it could care not one bit. via Pock…
SWF seeking SM, 40-50, human or android. Looks not important. The blinking type flooded John’s inbox. Delete, delete, del—he paused on the last: Android adoption today, new shipment, Middleton Square. via Pocket
I’ve travelled distances that make oceans seem like ponds. I’ve dealt with solar flares and meteor storms, flown half-blind and bleeding from situations that would make a sane man scream for his mother. via Pocket
Strange Horizons - The Trees of My Youth Grew Tall By Mimi Mondal
I believe that every child in the city should learn to climb trees. City folk train their children to swim and to dance, to run and play games, to cross the horizontal plane in every possible motion, but they always ignore the vertical. via Pocket
She placed the order online, as she had done before. No credit checks anymore, no profiling questions, just pick a time and a place, and the service guaranteed her date would be on-time and appropriate. via Pocket
“Forget the P’s and Q’s: Mind your C’s and K’s, A Cautionary Note for Prospective Parents,” by John S. Walters - Defenestration
I am a lifelong liberal of good standing, with impeccable credentials. On one issue, however, I am an unabashed Goldwater conservative. If there’s one thing that raises my ancient hackles, it’s whenever I see the names Cathy and Casey defiled with a…
We are drafting this letter in response to the riots that took place outside of our headquarters, in the hopes of putting toxic rumors about our organization to rest. If your protest taught us anything, it is that it takes a lot more than bullets, b…
Beneath Ceaseless Skies - Drawing The Barriers by Tamara Vardomskaya
Her tea shook, and she wondered if at the other end, looking down into his own teacup or water glass or wine goblet, he would see his image of her rippling. “I am a mage.” So was this man, of course, this so-called Magister Lie. The first thoughtsen…
Beneath Ceaseless Skies - Flesh and Stone by Kathryn Yelinek
Perrin took a bride in the dark midwinter. With any other sculptor of his talent, the wedding would have rivaled that of the Count de Roche-Sur-Terre, held the week before. But Perrin chose his wife at dusk, swept her off to a priest by moonlight, a…