Randall lowered one foot on to the surface of green fibers. The organic matter yielded under her weight but seemed to support her. She dared to put a second foot on to the strange, graminoid material—just as Archive came back with a response. “A lawn,” it told her. “Proceed with operation.” Randall prowled across the …

The Sisters' Line by Liz Argall and Kenneth Schneyer. Uncanny Magazine Issue Six short fiction.

1. I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor Think of it like the best macaroni and cheese you’ve ever had. No neon yellow Velveeta and bread crumbs. I’m talking gourmet cheddar, the expensive stuff from Vermont that crackles as it melts into that crust on top. Imagine if right before you were about …

As they pulled him out of the oxygen tent, he asked for the latest party. “Oh, Mr. Jones,” one of the nurses said, amused. “We wouldn’t forget that.” The nurses, women in gray smocks with pale faces, moved in and out of view, murmuring in conspiratorial voices. Something important had happened. Something that he should …

For Cindy Pon In the garden where girls grew from flowers, their days washed in the distant trills of the queen’s wooden flute, a gardener toiled. His name was Rajesh, and in his spare time, he collected shadows. Shadows of nectar–loving hummingbirds, shadows of laughing fathers, shadows of hawks who preyed on squirrels. Rajesh had …

Scrawny and boyish in his ill–fitting humanity, the wolf paced naked through my forest. Even my old eyes could see the way grasping brambles had torn his unprotected skin. An unwoven thing he was, a creature of the tower’s making. My responsibility. Or, at least, my fault. I set a platter of cold meat on …

Dearest Maru of house unknown, I have purchased, these five days ago, a small piece of your glasswork. It fits snugly in my hand, a drop–shaped vial of flame. Desert glass, said the traders, shaped from the desert sand by your fiery magic. It speaks to me. No, more than speaks—it sings—of dawns in saturated …

Jameson did not settle well; when keeping his company, neither did anyone else. His fingertips tapped, his foot bounced, his lips were perpetually chewed or dampened with a quick dart of tongue. He kept his hair buzzed short, taming some flyaway curling problem. He exuded a cloud of nervous energy like biting flies. I learned …

The Sculptor Through every moment of carving, I want her as one wants a woman. I want this lithe creature whose limbs I’ve freed from their ivory enclosures, whose rounds and slopes are discovering their shapes beneath my chisel. She is delicately colored like the palest of women, and when I run my fingers across …

This is the room where The Snow Like a Dancer dies, year by year and piece by piece. When they wheel in the cradle where she rests, she always thinks—for a bare, suspended moment—that it will be all right, that it will all end well—and then nausea tightens around her, and the white and stark …

Under the light fall of spring rain, three masked figures dashed through the crowded streets of Tsang. As they ran, they called to each other with a chorus of animal sounds: the chitter of rats, the coo of the black pigeons, and the mewing of the city’s dainty–footed cats. They were followed by a string …

“What a delicious garden!” Jane said after we moved into the house and began to explore the grounds of the estate my brother had leased for the summer. It was good to hear such joy in Jane’s voice, for she tends to be absorbed in melancholy matters most days, and as spending the summer at …

To Anna–Maria, my roots, my strength It’s the satellite phone duct–taped around my left bicep that wakes me up. Not the late October noises in the deep night, nor the ice–cold water that cleaves my body in half at the abdomen. It’s the desperate ringing, muted under layers of plastic to keep it dry, and …

Part of you is always traveling faster, always traveling ahead. Even when you are moving, it is never fast enough to satisfy that part of you. You enter the walls of the city early in the evening, when the cobblestones are a mottled pink with reflected light, and cold beneath the slap of your bare, …

On the Avenue Count the houses of worship: From Tyson Street to Tabor in Olney, you can walk a straight avenue of redemption, rising with the sun. Baptist, Buddhist, Catholic, Episcopal, and Evangelical—every people to their house. Only I visit them all, as part of this mester de juglaría, this cycle of irregular meter and …

She had retired to the swamp because she liked the color. When the Contagion College came back for her thirty years after she had fled into the swamp’s warm, black embrace, the color was the same, but she was not. Which brings us here. The black balm of dusk descended over the roiling muddy face …

The funeral was at dawn, the cold wind off the ocean rippling coat hems and tugging at scarves. The words were said, the blessing given, the family offered one final chance to make their farewells. When they had finished, the pallbearers picked up the edges of the thin pallet the old woman was laid on, …

Catalogued by Alibhai M. Moosajee of Mombasa February 1907 1. Apul Apul A male ogre of the Great Lakes region. A melancholy character, he eats crickets to sweeten his voice. His house burned down with all of his children inside. His enemy is the Hare. [My informant, a woman of the highlands who calls herself …

Everybody knows about Thrull. Thrull like legend among us folk—biggest, greenest, meanest, nastiest, and dirtiest of all—with one big difference: legends false, Thrull true. We tell the story of Thrull and the reindeer feast, and the story of Thrull and the Mountain Witches, and the story of how Thrull wrestled Winter and wed Summer on …

They are cutting you out of me, these creatures in their sealed white suits. Piece by piece their knives and curiosity are divorcing the gifts you have given me from the gifts I have prepared for you. Gone is the eye that gazed out over the cyan–purple sunset on Taurus 4. Severed are the muscles …

I always thought of the cabin on the lake as a magical place—which, in retrospect, seems a little ominous. The four of us arrived around mid–afternoon, and everything was as I remembered, not at all diminished by time: the long, shadowy dirt drive narrowed by looming fir trees, suddenly opening into a clearing saturated with …

(Content Note: Some readers may find elements of this story disturbing.) The greatest tragedy of Lydia’s life was when she broke her boyfriend during sex. Admittedly, he was a brain in a jar, but she’d been trying to make do. Ross hadn’t always been a brain in a jar, but he’d been cerebrally canned long …

The budget hotel is empty and desolate, the lady behind the check–in counter drained of color. Her eyes are wide and fraught as she looks over our reservation form. “Two bedrooms with double beds?” We nod. Rich passes her his credit card. “Five keys?” We nod again. She hands the keys to Rich with a …

Democracy was dead to begin with. There was no doubt whatsoever about that. The election proclaimed it and the electoral college confirmed it and Trump himself signed off on the note, vaguely annoyed that Clinton had somehow still gotten 2.9 million votes more than he had. Well, they were from California. Everyone knew California didn’t …

Three lies: One: Silence is permission; quiescence, acceptance; yes is yes means always yes. Two: This is the way of gods and beasts, a tradition of power. The men take, the woman is taken, her boundaries malleable, her desire negligible. This is cultural, universal, axiomatic fact. Mythology is unkind, deification teeth–marked by sacrifice. If there …

(Content Note for descriptions of sexual violence.) Your sister has too–large hands and too many teeth. Not in a sense that her gums are crowded or her fingers are long and she might have a career as a concert pianist. No, her hands are massive, thick–boned, tipped in wickedly sharp claws that shine like pearls. …

The traits that make me who I am are written on my skin. My biggest words are in my mother’s handwriting—smart, loving, resilient, organized. She wrote them on my back because there’s no way I’ll ever be able to reach that skin myself. Mother’s largest word is considerate, written in her father’s blocky letters, filling …

The boys arrive with the changing of the weather, ushered in by winter’s cold. Once a year, at the beginning of December, those silly boys who think coming here means they are brave. All of them so eager to test their worth on the edge of my husband’s axe. For years and forever and for …

An Eddie LaCrosse story “Would you look at that,” the queen said softly. “A white hart.” I followed her gaze. Far across the clearing, at the edge of the thick forest, an immense snow–white stag stood stock–still, as if posing for a painter. Only its ears twitched, as if it heard the queen’s faint voice. …

“Yeah, that’s some clog,” the plumber said. She pulled the metal–and–rubber snake out of the bathroom sink. Marisella wrinkled her nose at the gunk sticking to it. Whatever it had caught on in her drain had warped the metal and torn away bits of the rubber. Marisella asked, “Can you fix it?” and, more softly, …