Everyone knows about La Bruja. They say she lives somewhere down in the Avenues south of Eagle Rock. She is a tiny thing, short and round. Always dressed in black no matter the weather or time of year. Draped in mourning, they say, like La Llorona. …

The bullet fire drew a boundary between Masak and me and the rest of our brethren, laser tracers demarcating the distinction between safety and capture. While we curled up small and invisible underneath the leaking truck, those who were not so lucky…

The air was muggy, a heatwave burning through the spring, on the night that we met to conjure two people out of almost nothing at all. None of us could’ve done it without the others, and none of us would’ve dared, except Mason said please and I said…

Madu is a satchel who is in love with Eliza, who is a woman and who is also a princess. Sometimes Madu thinks of herself as a girl, and sometimes she thinks of himself as a boy, and at other times all she thinks is that she is just another thing tha…

Mary Toft is in the garden on an August morning rich with bees. Five months along, her belly presses against the rough linen of her skirt while one hand curves protectively around it, half support, half caress. via Pocket

Me, Waiting For Me, Hoping For Something More, by Dee Warrick | Shimmer via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2wdLye2

If a bear… by Kathrin Köhler | Shimmer via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2MFfFFl

They Have a Name For That, by Sara Beitia | Shimmer via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2BrS2eX

The Imitation Sea, by Lora Gray | Shimmer via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2MwugD9

Gone to Earth, by Octavia Cade | Shimmer via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Bp4v3h

What the Skeleton Detective Tells You (while you picnic), by Katherine Kendig | Shimmer via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2nQmExa

Something happened to you after you had the baby. via Pocket

I try to take a picture of the eerie. The power’s out, so I’m like, okay, standing outside the Pump n’ Stuff, looking at the gas pumps. My last customer was twenty minutes ago. Down the street by the McDonald’s, the black veiny power lines seizure u…

The silk threads of grief and time snap and spin away from the black looms, but all Freia wants to do is go back to Vienna. Dozens of women work the looms in the magnanery. Hands fly as the threads spin out of the boiling cocoons. Freia doesn’t work…

I took my shot and it landed true; a beam of light, passing briefly through the void and extinguished in a collapse of reality. Well, not exactly. There is no direction, or time, in the Manifold–only the roiling chaos of the quantum fields. I’ve wal…

Lieutenant Tann wiped his fuzzy torso. Months in a Chrono-tube caused the growth of a downy hair that matted together on the backs of his legs and arse. The computer suggested both Lieutenant Tann and Major Spar rub themselves with oil before taking…

We’re glaring at each other across a gap that is – as we have repeatedly tested – exactly nine metres wider than either of our best reaches. The ground for kilometres around us is nothing but churned mud and scoured rock. Not a leaf, not a lifeform.…

The brown woman came to Vrau from the sky, without a name of her own. Piarcu knew that she was nameless, even though the women of his family only whispered it when they thought no one else could hear. via Pocket

Yoshi scythes the lotus seedpod with orange-slickered arms and tosses them in the harvesting bag on her back. The blue sky overhead reflects ominously in the still ponds below. She reaches out and cuts the same perfect pod again. This means she’s in…

The godmeat stank of hibiscus and saltwater. Its noxious divinity threaded through the kitchen, the air itself feeling suddenly buoyant in its wake. via Pocket

Your parents first activate your bionosaur when they bring you home from the hospital. The bionosaur was a baby shower gift from your mom’s favorite aunt. They were nervous about its size, the stainless steel maw, the retractable razorclaws inside i…

Identity crisis.

It’s a record.

How to be a scientist.

Driving a hard bargain.

The score of a lifetime.

Unearthing the truth.

Time to go.

A taste of success.

Meet the literary agent.