Author : Beck Dacus “Sorry,” Merida said, “but why did we let him come aboard with a gun?” She looked warily at Jonathan’s holstered pistol, his hand guarding it from her and preparing to dra…

Author : Bob Newbell Wachter ran out of the bank just as the alarm sounded. It was not an auspicious beginning to what Wachter had imagined would be a long and successful criminal career. The telle…

Author : Andy Tu Reach into me and fix the leak that’s dripping my youth away. The creams, the antioxidants, the buckets of ice baths—what good have they done but stall the crawl of age? My first w…

Author : Beck Dacus “Sorry,” Merida said, “but why did we let him come aboard with a gun?” She looked warily at Jonathan’s holstered pistol, his hand guarding it from her and preparing to draw it. “You do know why he’s here, right?” Vennix asked her…

They are not awake. They have been asleep for days, years. They lie sprawled across train platforms, clutching cellphones, notebooks, and mp3 players. Their hearts barely beat, drowsy with decreased metabolism. Their fingernails have grown long, cur…

I never thought I’d live to see The End. In fact, the way I figured it, no one should see The End, I mean, that’s why it’s called The End, there is nothing after that, and certainly no one to see it. And yet, here I was. Floating gently in the shutt…

We’re cutting it damn close. The three Gyth gliders are closing quickly as we jink in and out of the towering rock spires attempting to stay out of their line of fire. We’re gaining altitude quickly enough, but Kharla’s running low on water to conve…

Author : N. R. Crowningshield Vanessa let the shower water flow over her hand. The old pipes moaned and shrieked as the shower head spewed into the white pedestal tub. The temperature of the of liquid changed from cool to warm to hot. Steam pillowed…

Wachter ran out of the bank just as the alarm sounded. It was not an auspicious beginning to what Wachter had imagined would be a long and successful criminal career. The teller had initially thought he was kidding when he’d asked for $20,000 in cas…

Trevor waited in the Jump Box. Grey electrodes threaded from his scalp and bobbed like Medusa’s curls as he amped himself up on electronica. I really need this A, he thought. The Lander sat at the stage’s opposite end, in an identical translucent ch…

Reach into me and fix the leak that’s dripping my youth away. The creams, the antioxidants, the buckets of ice baths—what good have they done but stall the crawl of age? My first wrinkle, curving upwards from my left brow like an evaporating tear. A…

“Relax. Breathe through your nose and count backward from ten,” said the technician. She was wearing a white isolation suit, one gloved hand twisting the flow regulator of the anesthetic, the other on my arm in a sterile and entirely unsuccessful at…

The following story first appeared in architect and author Ralph Adams Cram’s 1895 collection Black Spirits and White: A Book of Ghost Stories. via Pocket

For weeks, Sprite had told herself that Ratchanee Malakul was helping her hero get better, but no. “You have to accept that Jaran is never going to have sex with you,” the lifeguide told Sprite, as she was leaving on that last day. “You’re wrong,” s…

At the nurses station, Qina and Auntie Han were the only two left on duty. Everyone else had already gone home, relief flooding their faces as they exited the ward. Qina wasn’t her usual carefree self—but who could blame her? She was in the middle o…

This is a story that ends as all stories do, eventually, in deaths. When Ada’s parents died in the winter of her sixth year, she was sent to the neighboring parish to live with her aunt, Margery. via Pocket

And then there was quite a long time with nothing to chase. No suggestive tracks in the ice, no hopeful stories told by misinformed strangers. The air didn’t hold any name glancingly resembling her name, and there weren’t even rumors about intriguin…

Sometimes the Discontinuity kinks and curves and flips about as if it is alive. Openings slide along its vast length like undigested morsels down the gullet of a cosmic serpent. via Pocket

When he opened his eyes, it was a special kind of dark. The sky was a dull purple, and what light there was came from the ground beneath its stygian spread. He sat up stiffly in a sea of trash, a vast junkyard. via Pocket

Blue. That’s the colour I remember the most in that operating theater. It was the last honest colour I would ever see. I had them installed as part of my training. It was something I had a choice over. I regret that decision now but it was a one-way…

I’d like to remember her the way most ex-boyfriends remember their exes. That is to say, when I’m drunk and missing her, I want to remember that space right under her ear, her easy smile, and that way that she’d hiccup if she laughed too much.…

Author : Rollin T. Gentry Dr. Morris turned away and tapped a few times on the holopad projected from the bracelet on his left wrist. via Pocket

When pigeons deviated in mid-air and windless leaves rustled, the hidden dreamers were about. Carpeted with warm dappled light, the Italian Piazza was filled with coffee drinkers, buzzing scooters and devoted artists. via Pocket

She sat down on the bench, overlooking the local park. She and James used to meet here. It seemed a fitting place to say goodbye. After the operation, she might never come here again. Worse, she might never want to come here again. At 13, it had bee…

The nine-year-olds repeat the Camp Haven creed and then take their seats, gaze never wavering from the flag. At the head of the class, a strapping man swells with pride at the sight of these glowing youth. “Hi boys and girls! My name’s Sergeant Wall…

He is a good man. Remember that. He is a good man. There’s something in the bed, something that scratches your skin when you move your legs, and you whip the sheets aside, fearing an insect, or worse—a spider. Dirt, coarse and abrasive, clings to yo…

The gulls are falling from an empty sky. Slanting out around the neon amusement arcade into the chill wind, stepping huddled towards Bridlington harbour, there’s a smashed gull in the gutter. White plumes in spikes like ruptured cloud. via Pocket

Goya found the blade. I should say that first. He pulled it from the silt at the bottom of the creek bed, where its hilt sliced through the reflected clouds on the water’s surface as though it were itself one of the emperor’s great airships. He reac…

It turned out the woman came from only ten years uptime, so not a real time-traveller after all. But still. In those days Frank opened afternoons for workers from the Canaveral Timeport, coffee going on shift, beers coming off. It didn’t earn much, …

Welcome to the catacombs of via Altamontivecchi, the grandest and one of the most ancient in the world. I will be your guide for this special pilgrim’s tour in the English language. If you have booked in advance, you will find the number 34 stamped …