Genres: Fantasy
I was the only one among my friends who did not get the letter. Which is a real shame, because I was the only one who could snap a finger to conjure a flame. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Fantasy
When he woke, the air tasted of ash.
For a moment, he contemplated not getting up. There was a physical weight to smoke-filled air that went beyond the actual density of the particles. It crushed him; his throat closed up beneath it. It was never a good day when a neighborhood of ideas was consumed by fire. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Science Fiction
When my family agreed to take in one of the refugees from Haven 3, I was excited. Sarah was fifteen, just like I was and, even better, she was Jewish too! There were only a few Jewish teens on the ship, and it would be nice to have one more of us.
I knew things wouldn’t be perfect. Taking Sarah in meant sharing my tiny room with her. Once we added the second bed, there would hardly be space to walk between them. Still, I was sure we could make it work.
But my excitement didn’t last for long. The day she arrived, Sarah barely spoke a word to any of us. Every time I asked her a question, she’d nod or shrug or ignore me entirely. That night, she cried herself to sleep, and when I offered her a hug, she cried even harder. I couldn’t figure out how to make her stop. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
In the basement, scant lightbulbs sputtered in and out. The single torch, propped on a shelf, shone on the pages as I reviewed my copy: The plight of the Hindu laborer must be addressed on a societal level. He is forced to face his burdens alone, often without friends or family.
Typewritten stencils, leaving corpses of plastic letters on the ground. Mildew sprinkled the walls and released a foul odor. When I opened new ink, that stink would mix with the mildew.
Rage filled me as I pressed the keys on the typewriter. When I visited my father, he hadn’t even offered me a cup of coffee or asked how I was. Instead, leaning on his store counter, he told me about his latest backaches and arguments with his tenants. When I hinted that I was parched but wanted to pay for a soda, he offered me a cup of white Ovaltine. Its taste reminded me of how I missed my mother’s chai, how it would always soak the tongue with spices.
Father owned a candy shop in Seattle by a trolley stop; it also sold sodas and tobacco for those interested. He would curate newspapers and magazines for travelers and offer hot coffee to loyal customers. For children, he would boil sweetened Ovaltine powder in milk.
“You have grown too fast,” he’d grumbled in Tamil. “And you are eating too much, Shyama. How much money are we sending for your education?” (Continue Reading…)
Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4 – Episode 5 – Episode 6 – Episode 7 – Episode 8 – Episode 9
Their bonds had been loosened and they had been given water. When the goblins were retied, the elves let them keep their hands in front. Nessilka debated requesting the teddy-bear again, then decided not to push her luck.
“Do you think he believes us?” asked Murray.
“No.”
“He has to know we couldn’t have killed all those people. And they’ve been dead for days.”
“He doesn’t have any way to know how long we’ve been here.” Nessilka sighed. “Think it through, Murray…” (Continue Reading…)
Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4 – Episode 5 – Episode 6 – Episode 7 – Episode 8
The village square felt agonizingly exposed. The goblins clung to the shadow of the buildings as long as they could, and then there was a water trough for horses partway there, but after that there was nothing to hide behind except bodies.
It was not the first time in Nessilka’s life she’d hidden behind bodies, but if the great gibbering gods were kind, it’d be the last. She thought the smell might follow her for several lifetimes. (Continue Reading…)
Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4 – Episode 5 – Episode 6 – Episode 7
Sings-to-Trees did argue, but it seemed to Nessilka that it was more a matter of form. The encounter with the cervidian had shaken him badly, and what he really wanted was to get home and send a pigeon to the rangers as quickly as possible.
“You don’t have to go,” he said. “We could all go back. We’ll let the rangers handle it.”
The notion that someone higher up the chain of command would be more able to handle anything was so foreign to Nessilka that she couldn’t really get her head around it. Could elves really be that different?
Naaaah. Elves were elves, but the military was the military. There was something immutable about it. Orcs were pretty different from goblins, too, but their military worked almost the exact same way, except that at the higher levels you were answerable to the priesthood, and nobody ever said anything nice about orcish gods. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Science Fiction, Urban Sci-Fi, Weird Western
Nine Judges rode in around noon. At the gabbled news the smattering of day-timers pushed away tumblers of whiskey and, with a curt nod from my father–the saloon owner–I stepped out onto the porch, still carrying my broom, to watch them arrive.
No horses. Equal in pace to any of God’s creatures, Judges don’t need them.
Gran says they travel as swift as the gas-guzzling automobiles of old, though the only one of those I ever saw at a county fair wasn’t any faster than a slow man walking.
“This town is in lock down,” Chief Justice Fisher announced, her voice echoing from clapboard walls as she pinned the proclamation to the door of the church with a metal hand. “By order of the Scotus, until we complete Judgment.” (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Urban Fantasy
When the clerk at the convenience store takes my twenty for the frozen mac and cheese and the cheap wine, I barely notice the fractal pattern of cracks running across his face. They are unique yet generic, like a one-of-a-kind snowflake in a field of snow. Special, but not.
When I was young, I tried to decipher the meaning of the breaks. My mother had one that ran from below her right eye, across her nose, and then curled around beneath her cheek. It was geometrical, made from dozens of rectangles overlaid, making her look like a digital android, or some sort of science fiction space traveler. For years I prodded, trying to figure out what in her past could have caused such a break, but I was never able to determine anything.
I suppose that is the nature of being human. We are all broken, and sometimes we don’t even know why. (Continue Reading…)
We had such a flood of submissions in August/September that we’ve decided to push our Halloween 2024 window back from next month to February 2024. The schedule page has been updated to reflect this.
Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4 – Episode 5 – Episode 6
The goblins approved of the zucchini, in goblin fashion. They sat around the table on barrels, crates, and anything else that would hold them, complaining happily.
“This is terrible!”
“Worst zucchini I’ve ever seen! Looks like baked dog turds!”
“And they’re gritty! Did you even wash them?”
“What’s with this bread? I could use it to fix my boots!”
“I think this butter’s about to turn.”
The Nineteenth polished off three bowls apiece, five loaves of zucchini bread, and Mishkin and Mushkin were licking the casserole dish clean. (Continue Reading…)
Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4 – Episode 5
The farmhouse was very quiet.
It was too quiet.
Generally when people say it’s “too quiet,” it’s a prelude to a monster with a lot of teeth jumping out of the grass. In this case, however, since the only thing that could qualify as monsters with a lot of teeth were the goblins themselves, it was just plain too quiet.
The farmhouse was a small sod building—and that was odd, too, since there was a whole forest right there, and who builds out of sod when they have wood?—and the fences were the low dry-stone affairs that look cute and quirky and charming until you realize they’re made of all the rocks that some poor farmer had to haul out of a field by hand.
There was wood, but not much. The timbers were in place only where nothing else would do. A few scattered tree stumps around the farm showed where they had probably come from.
It was a neatly kept yard, with a thatch roof and a small henhouse and a pigpen. Around back, a low stable held three empty stalls.
It was very, very quiet. (Continue Reading…)
