Something woke me. A sound. I rolled to my back. Sand and rock ground into my shoulders and my skin hurt everywhere and my lungs seemed too dry to work properly. But for a moment I forgot all that,…

Judy wakes up in the middle of the night to an empty bed, but she knows exactly where Edward is. There’s only one place he goes these days. As she lies there in the late summer heat, the sheet stic…

It started with a routine-sounding letter from my health insurance company. I opened it quickly because I was in the mood for a snack, and there was a little picture of cherries on the lower right …

The shoes they gave her don’t fit. She notices in the waiting area of the IWT counseling office and holds one foot out in front of her. Wiggles her toes and feels them rubbing against the inside front seam of the shoe. via Pocket

The howls of the gore-hounds filled the night air. Vanda stopped to catch her breath. Sounds echoed off the trees, throwing noises at her from odd angles. Her pursuers were close. When they caught …

John waited for Holly, continually clenching and then unclenching clammy hands. He sat on the edge of the bed, his stomach roiling, his feet tapping the floor incessantly. It never got easier. He always dreaded the confirmation. It was inevitable an…

“If you’re really my future self,” I said, “convince me.” “Because stopping time isn’t convincing.” “I believe you have a time machine. Prove you’re me.” I tried again to straighten my head. “If yo…

When Rose McAlder died at eighty-five, it took us all of an hour to congregate on her property, rubbing our hands and stamping our feet against the October chill. We hadn’t known it was she who had…

The lake’s still surface was a golden quilt. The churches which amassed along the shore over the centuries now had their fossilized features balanced between day and night. A most sacred moment. Th…

Judy wakes up in the middle of the night to an empty bed, but she knows exactly where Edward is. There’s only one place he goes these days. As she lies there in the late summer heat, the sheet stic…

The bell jingled, and Emmeline looked, frowning, at the door through to the front of the shop. She was in the middle of a fitting, and one did not expect interruptions if one was being fitted for c…

The angels moved up the road towards Gethsemene in a triad formation. If they’d walked, that would have been something. If they’d flown, swooped in from the sky, that would have been so…

The amusement park was so large that it had two trains named after root vegetables. Vienne got on the wrong one. Lugging her magician’s trunk in one hand and a map of Wonder Gardens in the other, s…

Ahokupe’s wrists jerked as the sennit ropes were tied tight behind him, and he bit his lip against the pain. Forcing his spirit to quiet, he breathed the subtle scents of rotting durian from the su…

Pleadingly Marshall’s innocent. There’s been looting and worse everywhere since the missiles hit, but he’s taken nothing except a jacket he found in an abandoned car. It’s not honor that keeps him …

The sorcerer wove his beloved out of the finest silks and linens, the poorest of which was fit for any earthly king. Across her neckline and cuffs, he affixed the most delicate lace, threads more s…

Warsaw, 1812 Before Warsaw, I had spent days inventing myself as a pianist. Tailoring my biography, imagining what could happen in my possible lives. Love, perhaps, there was place for love; politi…

Enoch woke to the murmuring of window glass against the crown of his head. Outside, the approaching bellcart signaled a new morning, each heavy peal humming through the windowpane. via Pocket

Kevin’s dad drove the huge water truck out the town gate every Wednesday morning. The brake lights glowed bright red when the truck stopped and the guards opened the gate. The lights dimmed, then d…

“That’s the worst thing about the end of the world,” Elsie said, staring mournfully into a teacup that had long ago been licked clean of every last drop of Tetleys and soggy crumb of custard cream.…

My happiest ending would be if Offie moved in here and I weren’t alone all the time. It doesn’t shut me out. Offie knows how afraid I am of being alone so it leaves the channel open. I could contact it without reestablishing network protocol. via Po…

When the Fata first found me, I was very small, and I had lost my voice. Nevertheless, she took me in, and proved both kind and cruel thereafter. I used to gesture pleas, begging for the return of …

Among the infinite forms which the natural world delivers us, none is more fascinating, more truly wonderful, than that incomprehensibly complicated movement referred to, in its entirety, as ‘human…

On Sunday, Janie’s com pinged with a message from her cousin who worked for Visage, one of the big city body-mod firms. via Pocket

Circe knelt in front of the pig, holding its face so that its eyes looked into hers. “You are not really a pig,” she said to it. “You know that. Think. Remember who you are, what you are, and you will return to that form.” The pig’s eyes blinked. vi…

HOPper shut off the light as his mistress left the kitchen, scrubbing at her eyes while she made her way down the hallway to the bedrooms. Just as Vanessa reached the girls’ door, he dimmed the hall light from the standard eight hundred lumens to th…

I guess it started with the robot talking to me at the front of Perfect Pizza. It was the check-out clerk, one of the humanoid ones, vaguely male with his square features, bald head and glass eyes. via Pocket

It seemed impossible that the war had left a single thing untouched. And yet, here she was, familiar boards creaking under her bare feet, familiar smell of hotcakes and burnt coffee wafting from the kitchen. And in front of her, corn swayed in the s…

Peter Carlson held the gurgling two-month-old infant with one hand, while the other dug through a dresser drawer. “Bwa! Bah!” gurgled the baby. “Right as usual, Cassie,” Peter said, pulling out a b…

It moved forward in a crawl, jagged angles flowing over soil and stone alike, dawn shaping shadow and sun into beaks and talons that moved relentless toward her boot and over it. With a touch of he…