Remains
When it happens, you’re unprepared. Everyone is. You were never as safe as you believed. Normal ends here, in this moment. But you don’t know it at first. At first, you run. Run. Don’t look down, don’t look up.
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Fantasy Fiction
Simmered in Their Wealth Like the Richest of Sauces
Listen, my vicious darlings, for this world is strange and full of promise, and when you awake, there is much you’ll need to know. Long ages after humans last encountered a real, waking dragon, there was a man called Dennis Knight.
Instructions for the Broken Hearted
You Will Need: – a Heart in a jar; – a Knife (sharp); – a Tarp. Prep: Lay down tarp on clean surface. Place prybar and knife within reach. Place self on tarp. Instructions: Think of your most recent ex. Now, take the knife in your dominant hand.
You Will Not Live to See M/M Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension
SETTING: The adyton at the Temple of Delphi. Smoke rises from a vent in the floor, partially obscuring PYTHIA, who is sitting on a high stool carefully positioned behind the smoke. ACHILLES stands, supplicant. Behind him, the CHORUS looks at their phones.
The Boy Who Ran from His Faerie Heart
Here is a boy, barely thirteen, broken, lying in the road, twisted metal around him, twisted metal in him. Here is his heart, pierced by the shrapnel of the truck, a truck no longer, now a confusion of tangled wire and torn steel and glass pebbles.
All the Colours of the Death Knell
What is the colour of pain? In the growing carmine tide that creeps in her heart-mind, Mathilde would swear all that hurts is red, like her scratched hand, her wounded wrists, her slashed ankles. It’s the blood trickling from her fingers.
The Blade and the Bloodwright
The soldiers slit the woman’s throat every evening before bedding down so they can sleep without worry. She mocks them but never fights the knife coming to her. Two of the men still take turns watching her in case she heals before the rest of the cadre wakes.
Muna in Barish
Muna shuts the storeroom door as quietly as she can. Holding a just-waxed bundle of letters to her chest, she sticks out her head to check the bookshop floor. If she walks between the shelves on the far right, she can slip out unnoticed in ten heartbeats. The main door of the bookshop is propped open, the sun shining after what feels like a year of sodden clouds and sludged streets—she can’t wait to feel its warmth on her skin.
The Real Worlds
The possible worlds hung and spun in five-dimensional space like ever-twisting jewels of sand-brown and burgundy, frost and ocean. Mother, Father, and Amelia made their camp on a relatively flat piece of spacetime, stretched between three clusters of possible worlds. Mother and Father were careful campers. They’d drilled Amelia on the dangers of disturbing the possible worlds, so she watched them float and sway from the corner of her eye, making sure that her soft footsteps didn’t jostle them.
Starpoop
First off, your name. I remember that night clearly. We were tucking you into your big boy bed upstairs after reading from your new book about the joy of going potty. A lavender breeze swirled open the curtains, revealing the constellations and full moon over the fields. Solemnly you announced, “I am poopy from the stars.” A moment later you soiled yourself loudly for emphasis and Papa made a quick escape, because he always says that diapers are Not His Thing.
