Fantasy
Between Above and Below
Next war, the angel decided, he was going to sit out. Before the dust settled, before hosts rose and fell depending on their actions and inclinations, he fled. Cowardice, maybe. More like pragmatism, he rationalized.
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Fiction
Science Fiction
The Aliens Said They Wanted to Party
It was close to midnight on the second day of Diwali when we got the message. From deep space—far out past the Kuiper Belt and Pluto, which is not a planet anymore and probably pissed about it—a radio signal penetrated the atmosphere and reached our big-ass dishes in the desert made for this type of thing. Props to NASA, they only took four hours to decode the encryption algorithm.
Fantasy
A Guide on How to Meet the Deity of Many Faces
Here’s a list of items/materials you need for this journey. Please note that these items vary from the purpose of your meeting. Below is a breakdown. — If you have suffered hurt from a miscreant, plunderer, been swindled in trade, or assaulted in any manner, this section is for you. Buy either a three-month-old native brown broiler or a seven-year-old he-goat.
Science Fiction
The Heist for the Soul of Humanity
The simulation blossomed around Nadja Gavrić like a hypercube unpacking itself into three dimensions. The plain metal floors of the Roses’ cargo bay turned the shiny white of faux marble. The walls closed in, became a circular chamber. Display cases sprang up around the perimeter. Nadja stumbled backward when her right arm suddenly joined an exhibit of Cometborne funerary instruments.
Fantasy
The Red Queen’s Heart
Anything can be bought or sold at the Night Market. A dozen hummingbird tongues curled like tiny snails, basted in honey and chili oil and served on a silver tray. A mermaid’s song, caught in an antique bottle of smoked glass. A gleaming dagger carved from the ivory of the last true unicorn-whale. Gowns of moonlight and mist, trimmed with sea-foam lace. The lost diaries of one’s youth.
Science Fiction
The Only Writing Advice You’ll Ever Need to Survive Eldritch Horrors
1. Second Person POV: You’re a good person, although your ex doesn’t believe it—and here you are, writing in the second person, which your ex says is a limiting, even off-putting POV, simply to get his attention, to tell him your side of the story. Your boyfriend broke up with you last week after confessing he had doubts about your character. What really hurts is that since the breakup, he’s left your emails and texts unread.
Fantasy
Songs of the Sorrow of Thorns
The ballads of grief are sung in the moonlight. You were a minute old when you knew this story predates your mother’s mother’s mother’s birth. But the knowledge within was older still, notched inside you like food through the umbilical cord. And there it had coiled since you were but a seed, pulsating under your navel and releasing into the air on the sharp crescendo of your first cry on the eighth of Shaʽbān. The window panes shattered. The town mourned.
Science Fiction
The Last Lucid Day
You’re asleep in dreams of your father holding your head underwater, so the call from Magnolia Assisted Living goes to voicemail. “I didn’t raise a son of mine to count on his fingers,” your father says in the dream—because ah, yes, it’s all of your worst moments rolled into a single nightmare. You hear the beeping of your alarm and you know you’re dreaming, but you can’t wake up any more than you can pull yourself free of your father’s hands.
Science Fiction
Warning Notes from an Annihilator Machine
05.22.2028 — Dear Teejay_009: Today makes it a decade and a day I have been keeping tabs on you. I started by watching your mother, monitoring all her movements while she housed you. There’s no better time to relay this message but now.
Fantasy
The Weight of Salt
We’ve never been so busy. The cave where we work used to be calm and, if not entirely devoid of sound, then split only by the crash of waves at high tide and the occasional cry of a woman who didn’t listen when we said listen this will hurt this will hurt this will hurt.
