Fiction

Fantasy

We Are Where the Nightmares Go

Everyone knows the story of the little girl who fell down the rabbit hole and of the children who walked through the wardrobe and of the little girl who was scooped up by the tornado and of the little boy who found the book that never ended and of the little girl who said the right words on the other side of the mirror and of the little girl who unlocked the bricked-up door in the cellar and of the little boy who had such wonderful dreams night after night. But those are the children who came back.

In May 2020 (Issue 120)

Science Fiction

Melting Like Metal

by Ada Hoffmann

Author spotlight

When the quantum supercomputing systems of the God called Nemesis registered the sighting of the heretic Candor Gray—already tried in absentia and slated for termination, and assigned the serial number of HA3-940QK322PF-P—Enga Afonbataw Konum of Nemesis was already waiting, as she’d waited during the last few dozen stupid assignments. Enga was an angel of Nemesis, a no-longer-human cyborg built for a singular purpose: to hunt down and destroy the Gods’ enemies.

In May 2020 (Issue 120)

Fantasy

The Fenghuang

by Millie Ho

Author spotlight

Her skin was sore and feverish under her fingers, as it always was a few days after she came back from the dead. Candice unwrapped the bandages around her head and peeled off the itchy scabs behind her ears. She shuddered at the memory of her regeneration: the charred bones snapping back into place, the raw skin stretching over exposed nerves, the first pump of blood searing like hot acid through her reborn body.

In May 2020 (Issue 120)

Science Fiction

One Hundred Sentences About the City of the Future: A Jeremiad

by Alex Irvine

It rained yesterday, only in my precinct, far in excess of the scheduled and published amount, as a result of which some of my more delicate houseplants, which are flowering, were severely damaged.
The choices in the mayoral election are disappointing, far from the ideological panoply promised in early stages of the campaign.
Because of this, I am deciding whether or not I should file a formal Notice of Intent not to vote.

In May 2020 (Issue 120)

Fantasy

I Bury Myself

by Carmen Maria Machado

Here is what you do when you need to choose the end. First, find a person who knows your body, and fuck them for three days. Then, drive to a meadow, where there is so much life. There, dig a hole long enough and wide enough for your body to fit. Next, climb in. Then, wait.

In May 2020 (Issue 120)

Fantasy

The Time Traveler’s Advice to the Lovelorn

by Adam-Troy Castro

Author spotlight

Time is best described as the thing that must crawl by before even the most unlikely events finally get around to happening. A lot of it had passed in the little village we now visit, drifting down its cobblestoned streets like loose papers carried away by the wind, before the most unlikely of all developments had finally occurred. Samael, the junk collector, had fallen in love. Nobody had ever expected this, in large part because Samael was as dull and unimaginative a man who had ever lived.

In May 2020 (Issue 120)

Fantasy

The Witch Speaks

by Rati Mehrotra

Author spotlight

As different as earth and sky. That is what they said about us. Yet even earth and sky meet at the horizon. Shade your eyes from the sun. Look, far in the distance. Do you see that line where brown merges into blue? I’m ready to walk there. But not before having told my story.

In Apr. 2020 (Issue 119)

Science Fiction

A Subtle Web: A Tale From the Somadeva Chronicles

by Vandana Singh

The Blue People of the desert continent on the Planet Miln have never been in space, as far as their ancestral memories go. Among the sand dunes and the whirling dust devils of the Southern Continent, they lead nomadic lives, content to traverse, generation after generation, the shifting pathways across the great desert. In all their remembered history, only one of them has ever traveled to the Northern Continent and beyond, never to return. The Blue People do not speak to the Northerners.

In Apr. 2020 (Issue 119)

Fantasy

Neversleeps

by Fred Van Lente

There were three Pinkertons. There were always three. One was a white man, one was black, and the other was a Celestial. They may have been something else before, but now they were Pinkertons. Same brownish-grey tweed suits, same bowler hats, same obese-caterpillar mustaches lurking below their noses. Simon Leslie was playing hold-’em in the parlor car when the train slowed between two mesas in Monument Valley with a puff of steam and a sigh.

In Apr. 2020 (Issue 119)

Science Fiction

Voice of Their Generation

by Andrew Dana Hudson

Author spotlight

On their ninth rewrite of the third act of Detective Pikachu vs. Predator, it occurred to Thicket that they might just be the voice of their generation. In a fever, they swiped together the final epic speech where Detective Pikachu refutes Predator’s cynical attempts to turn him against his human partner, arguing that the Pokémon relationship with humanity was one not of servitude but of guardianship, for every Pokémon can see within each human the potential to rise above their flawed nature.

In Apr. 2020 (Issue 119)