In which we learn about the donors of each of the nine teeth and what effects they had on Washington.
Content warnings 8
abuseanimal-harmdeathracismsexual-violenceslaverysuicideviolence
Bodily Autonomy
312 free-to-read stories tagged “Bodily Autonomy”
Tabitha has been walking a long time, trying to wear out seven pairs of iron shoes; Amira has been sitting alone on a glass hill that suitors try to climb.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
"It is 2091, and Grace is staring at the rabbit in the corner of her visual overlay. It is an Angora rabbit, fluffy and white, and when Grace picked the icon out, she did not realize how much she would come to dread the sight of it. She moves, and the...
Content warnings 6
abusedeathmental-illnesspregnancy-losssexual-violencesuicide
AirBody is like AirB&B except you rent out your body, not your home. Arsalan doesn’t expect any trouble from a middle-aged Pakistani woman, but everything she does reminds him of lost opportunities in his own past.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
The aliens invited one human to their library 32.5 light-years away, and Hazel hopes to find lost research that might still save the Earth from final ecological collapse. If she can get in, that is.
Content warnings 2
deathpregnancy-loss
In which we learn how the new court magician was recruited and find out how even a “market rat” can qualify. We learn that there is real magic, but it comes with a price.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
The girl he killed was much more than merely human, and there will be consequences.
Content warnings 4
deathmisogynysexual-violenceviolence
Childbirth attracts zombies, so Brit has to leave the shelter for a while when she gets ready to give birth so as not to put the others at risk.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
"Once a decade, a titanium-nosed shuttle plows through the rings of the planet Tartarus with a new batch of prisoners destined for the Orpheus Factory. The debris that makes up the rings is so thick that it thunders like a hailstorm, deafening the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"Everything Anton owns goes in one black trash bag. His ratty yellow sketchpad, which he bought to draw the other familiars when he moved here, and only ever used three pages of. The few shirts and khakis that he paid for with his own money, before Mr....
Content warnings 3
abusesuicideviolence
An enhanced chimp and her human partner investigate an apparently pointless murder committed by a woman who was under remote control from an unknown source.
Content warnings 5
abusebody-horrordeathsuicideviolence
Fourteen-year-old Ghost gave up on finding a foster family a long time ago. She’s just waiting until she turns 18 and can leave “the Agency.” Then a new girl turns up—one who can actually remember her life before she was sent there.
Content warnings 6
abusebody-horrorchild-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
"1926 Washington, D.C. Shaw District “There’s a man on the front stoop.” The words spilled from her in a much more mundane way than Judy had expected, considering how her neck was fluttering with her excited pulse. Alvin looked up from the new Langston...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 6
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicmisogynysexual-violenceviolence
Long ago, Sylvie turned herself into a tree to avoid rape, but she wonders if there might not be a better way.
Content warnings 3
sexual-violencesuicideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 7
abusebody-horrordeathgoreracismsexual-violenceviolence
Lola (aka Eliza) has had problems dealing with people ever since she was a child, but she's always been good with snakes.
Content warnings 6
abusechild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathsexual-contentsubstance-use
When an illicit trade deal goes wrong and Quandary is blamed for it, she goes on the run to avoid the crosshairs of a bioengineered killer that only lives for 24 hours. If Q can evade it for that long, she just might survive.
Content warnings 3
deathsubstance-useviolence
In this spell-binding tale, a Pakistani storyteller captivates a group of wide-eyed tourists with a nesting doll of interlocked stories about a trickster and a hidden city ruled by the Queen of Red Midnight.
Content warnings 4
abusebody-horrorchild-deathviolence
Cecily goes in search of her highschool best friend, who seems to have hidden in China where he’s using her research to try to create enhanced human beings.
In 1888 a woman suffering a hideous deformity was murdered in London. Today, her descendent wants to find the culprit.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
The crew of the Themis colony write home about their struggles with a mission and a world that seems to be more than a little off.
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssubstance-use
"When Mark told you he was marrying your clone, you said “congratulations” on autopilot, because that’s what you say when your friend tells you they’re getting married, and you had promised to stay friendly after the divorce. You studied his face, his...
Content warnings 1
child-abuse
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
racism
Only one nation has nuclear weapons, but their rules against using them require that things be so desperate that the President be willing to kill a child to get the launch codes.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
child-death
"When I met the young Mr. Turing, I had not yet ascended as Autumn’s King. Nowadays it has become fashionable for the sons and daughters of the lesser fey gentry to improve their position in the shifting hierarchy of the Courts by virtue of intrigue,...
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentsexual-violence
"The form is one page long. No back. Just a front. It should be longer. There are six copies of the form, all different colors. Like I’m working my way through the rainbow to the end where I’ll finally find peace. Red. A parent or guardian. I meet my...
Content warnings 3
abuseillness-and-pandemictransphobia
"Your mom loves you,” Cassie’s father says. They’re in an elevator. They only ever talk about Cassie’s mom in elevators, or when they go hiking and Cassie’s father leaves his watch at home. Cassie doesn’t know if her mom actually doesn’t listen, then, or...
Content warnings 4
abusesexual-violencesubstance-usesuicide
"There is no limit to the number of curses in the world. For each one the monks try to exorcise, ten more take its place. We are not here because we enjoy it though. Please don’t misunderstand. As you dip into steaming bath waters, entwine your bodies...
Content warnings 4
cannibalismsexual-violencesuicideviolence
"Cool and Sexy Asian Girl stands outside the convenience store under the striped awning and waits for the rain to stop. The rain is never going to stop. Cool and Sexy Asian Girl would need to go to a different city for the rain to stop, a city not built on...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 5
deathmental-illnesssexual-violencesubstance-useviolence
Stick was made to pilot Phoenix in the war against the apostates. Stick never feels entirely human, but the final battle approaches, and Stick looks forward to it.
Content warnings 4
abusedeathviolencewar
Whenever the captain dies, the new captain inherits his/her memories back to the start of the mission, but only the good ones; the sin eater gets the bad ones.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Selemei’s push for a law to allow women to stop having children when it risks their health upends the complex caste-based society she lives in.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
In 2001, just before the attacks, a girl out West has a very close encounter with space aliens.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathgoresexual-violenceviolence
"Once, in a certain kingdom, at a certain time, a river flowed under a bridge. It flowed under a bridge and past a willow tree, and in that willow tree dwelled the spirit of a girl who had drowned. I dwelled in that willow tree, and I was content."
Content warnings 1
death
"Darius sells three pocket robots on the first Tuesday of October, and another three on Wednesday. At this rate he’ll be able to pay for his legs by Christmas. He does lose one robot to theft: someone figures out how to jimmy open the door of the display...
All its life, a small monster with emerald scales has been a source of never-ending food to larger and more powerful creatures who feast on the small monster’s limbs each time one regrows. This is the story of how the small monster meets an industrious...
Content warnings 4
abusebody-horrorchild-abuseviolence
Approaching 50, Mabel decides to become a glass bottle dancer. She tries to hide it from her family, but the local cockroaches notice it for sure when she gathers up their bottles, and they’ve got dreams too.
She wants to get out of Hell, but all the boys she has in mind keep letting her down.
When other girls catch fairies, they wish for beauty, but Amelia just wants to do well on her science project.
Sister Nadine sits in her cell at the church and offers wisdom to any of the townspeople who come by. But she’s starting to see things that suggest the world isn’t quite what it seems to be.
Donny is a young teen in high school, but his augments give him an intimate connection to the Internet—and put him at odds with his teachers and other students.
Male fairies often seduce maidens, but Rose actually seeks them out.
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
A young apprentice at making magic gloves considers breaking the rules to make a special pair to control his sister’s epilepsy.
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
People who don’t like living underground in the colony can live inside giant “whales” that float high in the planet’s atmosphere. That’s usually pretty safe.
Content warnings 1
death
In this prequel novelette to the critically acclaimed The Water Outlaws, nine-year-old Li Li is introduced to a web of community secrets and family intrigue when she helps her mother bury the corpse of a man that has somehow wound up in the storeroom of...
Content warnings 4
cannibalismdeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"The following documents have been uncovered by the Bromley Independent with regards to recent events at the local cemetery: the unofficial statements of Mr. Cyril Harris, city councilman; the recently discovered journals of Miss Celia Smith; letters from...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"In your head, the dead man wakes up crying. He stutters into awareness just as you manage to stanch the tears welling in your eyes, a response to the pressure of his presence on your limbic system. Your fingers brush, irritated, against the port at the...
"Start at the cleave of it, not at Zed’s meat death or Ep’s centuries-long destruction, but at the moment that Zed halves his own mind and walks away. Or as was reported in the internal memorandum, the moment when Pilot-Commander Zeta San Tano killed...
"When Peng opens the door, he finds himself face to face with a boy who looks exactly like himself. The other Peng stands in the doorway, as though surprised to have been caught. Two eyes peering out from the dark. Fluffy black hair, messy enough to stand...
Content warnings 4
animal-harmchild-abusedeathviolence
"In one version of the story, nobody dies, and you get to keep the princess as your maid. She chafes against this, longing for her silks and jewels. You scoff, tugging her after you, a tangle of jasmine wound around her arms. She’s tried to break free many...
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Anna’s an AI expert who’s called in to figure out what a new upgrade is causing AI-captained ships to destroy themselves.
Content warnings 1
death
After a full memory wipe, Wash moves in with his family and tries to get to know them again with the shadow of his unremembered crime hovering over him.
Isla’s job at Omega Corp seems to involve walking through a huge place called “Robot Country” to test something, but they haven’t really given her a clue what that might be.
On the eve of her 20th birthday, Sacrid Henn’s parents send her to an AI prison for her failure to conform. It’s a pleasant prison, but prison nonetheless, and she’s determined to get out.
Content warnings 1
abuse
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
When the princess marries, Amira’s duty to her will end and she’ll be free. But she doesn’t want freedom on those terms.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
The soprano playing Liù keeps trying to change the opera’s gruesome plot, starting with her own death scene.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
Aria just has a few days to save the whole universe from being swallowed up by Zarzak, the infinite love machine.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
An older medic with scant resources fights to support her community as they survive life behind the company wall.
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
Magical Girl Antifa War Machine By Esther Alter XYLIA We were at the bottom of a hole, a new construction site that went deep into the bedrock. I was the first to touch the artifact, a thing that didn’t quite have shape or color. I grabbed it. My new...
Content warnings 5
deathgoresexual-contentviolencewar
"Jay scrubs at the blood spot on her tennis shoe with her thumb and a gob of spit, hurried by the knowledge that Hardy will be there any moment. It’s swelter-hot on the gravel back road, and she’s doused in the sound of cicadas from the forest behind her...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"We used to cage them in the tide pools, when they were still small enough to capture in our little hands. Pull them out and snap photos that we could pretend to sell to magazines just like Papa. Them, gasping for breath, unable to see, fins fluttering. We...
Content warnings 4
abusebody-horrordeathviolence
"Now that I’ve failed as a woman, my punishment is to become a garden. I receive the verdict on a Sunday evening. They’re supposed to give you advance notice so you can put your affairs in order, but the letter is postmarked from more than a month ago—I’ve...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorpregnancy-loss
"Holli was hanging upside down off the edge of her flimsy folding bed, watching goretoons in her goggles, when Puck the Pirate showed up again. Ahoy, Holli! Guess what? His red-cheeked puppet face swelled, blocking out the show, which annoyed Holli until...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares. Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice...
Content warnings 3
abusetransphobiaviolence
"Mirae sits on her bed, parting her hair with one hand and feeling for the access port on the back of her head with the other. She finds the notched edges of the cap and twists counterclockwise until it comes loose. Her eye twitches as she slides the plug...
Content warnings 3
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"At the center of every starship was a bonsai starship. It rested in the starship’s command garden and provided the magic that propelled it. Novice Kei had known this longer than she had known her own name, especially since she was the eighth Kei who...
"A hoodie is what a Soucouyant give birth to when she trick a Midnight Robber.” Or so Rose calls herself. Passed off to orphanages. No idea who her mother and father were. Didn’t know the source of herself. Because she wasn’t given a proper foundation to...
Content warnings 1
suicide
"You don’t look Sweetbaby in the eye when he pushes out from under the tree throw. We know that now. Instead, the ears, or what’s left of them, are a better place to settle your gaze. They’re close enough to the face that you can tell which way he’s...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"If you’re looking for a cheap way to kill all this mold—and who isn’t, right now—look no further than Inkicide Disinfectant Concentrate 64oz (4 Bottles). It’ll curl your nose hairs right up into your skull, but that just means it’s working, amirite? Two...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorillness-and-pandemic
"They found the torn lamb in the gold spring grass, beside the gravel road. The flies had found it first. But the flies were still lazy and slow. Later in the season, when they found a feast like this, you would be able to hear them buzzing from a distance."
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
Beni’s a drag queen who reads minds, and he’s shopping for a new dress and the story that goes with it.
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusepregnancy-loss
When he’s caught kissing another boy, one of Izuchukwu’s two big secrets comes out. But if they find out he can turn into a bird and fly, he’ll be in real trouble.
Content warnings 2
abusehomophobia
Nora has a tendency of turning into whatever she’s dating. She became a rock climber when she dated a rock climber, a comedian when she dated a comedian. But the amateur acupuncturist goes differently.
When Suss is human, she’s in awful pain, but when she’s a wolf, she keeps getting in trouble. She has friends, but people are getting tired of it all.
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
In an empire obsessed with war, a healer married to a warrior seeks to escape the endless fighting, killing, and dying.
Content warnings 4
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
With tremendous powers of regeneration, Mars is an incomparable killing machine, but he’s on the run, and there’s one special prisoner he’s determined to rescue.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
A seriously subverted version of the story of Sleeping Beauty, starting with what happened when all the fairies at the party got stinking drunk.
In which a dim-witted prince fools a clever velociraptor into following him back to his court and what happened thereafter.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
When Reyna kills a rot hound, she knows her dead sister’s prophecy is coming true, and there’s not much time to convince the rest of the hold they all need to flee.
Content warnings 4
deathslaveryviolencewar
Delilah makes some money modeling, and Crispin offers twice what anyone else does. He never lets her look at the works in progress, though. He has his reasons.
Content warnings 1
violence
She was only ten when they kidnapped her to train as an assassin, but now she’s sixteen and she needs to prove herself.
Content warnings 1
violence
A young, newly minted witch meets an equally green knight, and they go off together in search of dragons.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
"Do you remember being born? I expect that you do. After all, it happened only a very few minutes ago. Sensation comes first. Perhaps it was my voice you noticed—a ragged voice, new-carved. These are your first sounds. Sandpaper words, and the even temper...
Content warnings 1
death
"It turns out you’ve missed your favorite season. Your wheelchair rolls along a path strewn with ginkgo leaves, and you catch sight of the SWAILS building complex: fourteen dome-shaped structures surrounding a flat monument of what looks like black marble....
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"Steve, over here! Turn to your right. Can we get a smile?” He falls back on his training easily enough, turns to the cameras, gives them his famous crooked smile, tilts his head just so as the flashes go off so they can capture the smoulder that...
There is a woman, and she is a man’s wife. Please give her name. Call her whatever you’d like.
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorviolence
"Dead gods,” says Aunte Gull as she heaves the shimmering nets, “are almost as useless as live ones.” We work together, numb to the sea cold. We haul our catch back to shore, and I save my breath for work, knowing my aunte’s way of speaking. She is...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"The aquarium is different every time I die. Exhibits reshuffling like a deck of cards. The blood loss, though, that’s reliable. Death ninety-three was the jellyfish room: all those ghost bodies and moonsilk, limned radiant in the blacklight, jetting about...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
"In July 2088, shortly after I woke up from cryosleep, I received a copy of 2181 Overture. Assuming the book was science fiction, I didn’t even bother touching it. My only concern was how I could adjust to the new world I found myself thrown into. After...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"Modern bodies are made in large quantities. Factories line the edge of the Fissure Basin. Workers scoop sand and mud into large churning vats, feeding extruders that empty into molds in the standard shapes. Factory supervisors smooth out imperfections and...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
A university student seeks special accommodations for her new support animal, causing havoc all around her.
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
"Today one of the minders rolls one Veena Kaur Chan into my hairbay for a shampoo and cut. New client, transferring in from Palliative. Brainstem stroke. Unsuccessful rehabilitation. Pancreatic cancer. Ouch. Triple whammy. As the newly implemented...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"It’s not a real baby,” Jain says flatly. “And we should kill it.” Another sunless morning in the Waste. She and Stromile have woken up to a gift: a canister of pepto-pink fluid with an infant inside it. The tiny figure is chubby and squirmy and perfect,...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Yennie glanced out the window. An ice storm, a froth of glassy dust, was blowing in over the bone-colored hills. He was on Enceladus; his therapist was on Mars. He wanted to describe how sometimes his body felt hollow, and other times he felt his skin...
"Good art changes you. And that was the point, right? That’s what the social media ad that caught my attention wanted me to believe: Our Shoes: You couldn’t understand our struggle... Until now. I had read the line over and over again during a rare...
Content warnings 1
racism
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
body-horror
Judith takes a job as companion to a young man who appears to be terminally ill and has retired to a family estate by the sea.
Since her cancer, Sydney has just been drifting through life, but when she lets a friend move in, things change in an unexpected way.
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
The narrator, a young regenitrix in Victorian London, tries to help an older one have her baby. For a regenitrix swiftly regrows any lost body parts, but childbirth is always fatal.
Content warnings 2
deathsexual-violence
Gina and Bruno are supposed to manage the town’s factory, but someone keeps trying to steal their robots.
The narrator’s homelife has fallen apart since she told her husband she’s asexual, so they order a device that looks and talks like her, but with “improvements.”
Content warnings 3
mental-illnesssexual-contentsuicide
The narrator makes a deal with the Devil—or one of his snakes, at least. She thinks she’s clever, but one deal leads to another.
Content warnings 4
animal-harmself-harmsubstance-useviolence
A group of women have been chemically altered to set cities on fire from a distance. Not everyone thinks this is a good idea—including the women themselves.
Content warnings 4
child-deathdeathillness-and-pandemicviolence
The Life Tree protects the villagers, at the price of human sacrifices. When it takes Jiteh’s brother, she starts looking for ways to escape.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath
As the seas have risen, terrible things have come crawling out of them. Jersey wants Mir to come with him and move inland, but she won’t go without her disabled father.
Content warnings 5
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
Edgar Allan Poe’s writing has brought a creature into this world and it inhabits a young woman who wants to be rid of it. It has its own agenda.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
A dead woman sees her doppelgänger watching over her remains and wonders what she's up to.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
Agatha wants a svelte replacement for her plump body, but since she can't get one grown in a reasonable time, she looks into an illegal swap.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoresuicide
In a corporate-run dystopia, a trans girl plucked out of poverty to give birth to a clone meets her replacement.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorpregnancy-lossviolence
"Flyer 247-3 hasn’t flown in five days. In these five days, she has become accustomed to the hum and whine of the air filtration system cranked to its highest setting. She has become accustomed to her cell, four paces long, four paces wide. Its lack of...
"Scarlett’s eyes had to be perfect. Jon was the artist who’d made her, so it bothered him to think that so much of Scarlett would be crafted by other people. Scarlett’s limbs were carved from silicon polymer and coated in a soft synthetic skin from the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsexual-contentviolence
"If a robot stands alone in a field, staring into the forlorn distance as it obeys the last order it was given by a human, that order being, “Don’t move until we come back for you,” which it can remember uttered with a cruel sneer by a man who has taken a...
Content warnings 1
abuse
"In his early days in slivermoon, Saki worked the phone lines. Companies in slivermoon stressed in prestige magazines and press releases that it was too hard for them to employ bodies. Bodies were expensive to sustain. Bodies needed food, warmth, and...
"Ask me something only I would know.” You say this to your wife because you know you’re human. You can feel it in the familiar ache in your back, and the fear writhing in your guts. You feel it in the cold seeping into your bare feet from the kitchen...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"For Julie, it was the cryptid out in the woods behind our old elementary school. Wings, red eyes. Yes, Julie came back knowing exactly when everyone she loved was going to die, but it was worth it, she told us. The six of us—well, five after Sophie...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"I find Aleda’s scale, sticky with ichor, tucked between the tentacles of our pink anemone bed. I tweeze it out from the undulating appendages with my thumb and index finger and flounder against my escalating heart rate. Aleda’s swishing back and forth,...
"Monday’s lover tugs at Jan’s ribbon with his teeth. Jan doesn’t yell at the lover to stop. The guy just received bad news from the front—a friend lost to a bomb, perhaps, a sibling blown to bits; Jan doesn’t ask. He tells the lover, instead, to be...
Content warnings 1
war
"I’m pretty sure I’m photosynthesizing. That’s what I mean when I say this year made me a real plant lady. I promise this isn’t another weird quarantine derangement thing, like losing track of time or holding conversations with taxidermy. I still need to...
"The first time I saw her, she stood in the arch of the gate, a black spindle against the open stretch of road. I looked up from where I was kneeling in the garden and couldn’t look away. Head to toe in black, her face veiled. The air smelled like new...
"The first thing I asked, when the mage-king gave me a mouth, was whether he had given me a soul. His people’s beloved king, who held back the lords of the undead when they came roving; by whose conquering hand the strongholds were fed in the long fallow...
Content warnings 3
abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
"I was told I must swear fealty to William the Bastard. He had taken England, made himself king, fealty was required. But I did not swear and none could make me. He could kill me, or rather order his men to kill me. But he would not, because he wanted to...
Content warnings 1
violence
"When Jenea and I sneak out to the observation deck of the SSE Patroclus after lights-out, I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he waits until I’m distracted by the stars and tells me he set himself on fire. I tear my gaze from the outer edges of the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorself-harmwar
"The truth is that I lost my arm the same summer I lost my brother. Lost is a euphemism. In fact, my arm was retrieved by the paramedics and brought to the hospital, along with the two fingers severed from my left hand, and the various parts of my...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"That first autumn it felt as if the whole world had been made for them—which, of course, it had. They walked down the avenue of oaks that reached above their heads like Gothic arches, red leaves drifting lazily down to collect at their feet. Ashwin was...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"Here’s the thing you need to know to understand this story: I was meant to be an only child. The doctors, when they examined my mother, only counted one heartbeat. One. Me. I don’t know when my sister came along. My mother, so ready to accept, so...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"When Elisabeth takes the baby to the beach on Thursday afternoon, another shambler has got through the fence. “Stay ten meters back,” the guard says, his translucent face mask fogged with the heat. “Yes, yes,” Elisabeth says. “And the child. Ten meters.”...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath
"The first time Rang died, it stopped a typhoon. The typhoon raged at the entire Orphan Cousin enclave. Torrents rolled in for hours, swallowing the harbor in foam and brine, dashing fishing trawlers against the shore. Storage houses were dragged into the...
Content warnings 3
deathself-harmsuicide
"Juana thought this was bullshit. She had found the broken sailboat in the south wind and tried to pilot it to Hispaniola, but it wouldn’t go in the right direction. You’d think flying would be the hard part, but no, it was steering. And you’d think...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath
We learn the fates of three young villagers who follow the advice of the magic conch shell, which always offers two choices about the future and is never wrong.
Content warnings 1
misogyny
A century into its journey, a ship’s cameras transmit images of cannibalism back to Earth, and the authorities debate sending a destruct signal.
Content warnings 1
cannibalism
Anell takes a job with a great house researching immortality, but she secretly works on her own research involving reproduction.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Junior went out to fix one of the company’s holographic Jesuses that had started cursing. He knew he wasn’t supposed to get in a religious argument with the old lady, but she was very insistent.
Content warnings 2
abusesexual-violence
Four different groups of people explore the pros and cons of different ways to reproduce in the future.
Content warnings 1
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
After 500 years, the King of Myth and Shadow is getting bored, so he decides to take a vacation in New York City.
They say that when women throw themselves into the sea, they turn into seals. Teen-age Louise, dying of tuberculosis, finds a magical seal skin that turns her into a new person. Then the owner shows up.
Content warnings 3
abusesuicideviolence
An alien brain transplanted into a human child’s body serves as an involuntary translator. It’s not supposed to have volition or memories, but things don’t always work as advertised.
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
Meshee is one of eight pregnant women whose babies are being auctioned off against their will.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorpregnancy-lossviolence
Snow White’s life with the prince isn’t going so well, and her wicked stepmother—now a prisoner—seems determined to torment her about it.
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeathviolence
Xin’s orderly life on Eighth Colony changes forever when she ushers a mutilated body through the portal.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
From childhood, Flora, painted disturbing paintings, and her nurse fears the young lady carried this obsession into adulthood.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
An estate agent is forced to choose between a sale and his humanity when facing the inhuman eldritch forces that feed off rental tenants across the United Kingdom.
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorviolence
Graff and his crew face a particularly nasty challenge – an opponent so low-tech they might just have the advantage in this fight.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"They are travelling in the great dark before them nothing behind them stars just the two of them the man that captains and the ship that sails darts flies through space —whoever said space is empty did not know what they were talking about space is full...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorsexual-content
"High above the Amazon Rainforest, Hynd circled, her massive wingspan only visible by the shadow she cast on the battlefield below. She felt the wind pass across her wings, whispering of torrential rain coming; not her concern, so far above the clouds, but...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorviolencewar
A transnational adoptee is haunted by the ghost of his birth mother. Content warnings: Self-harm, suicidal ideation Copyright © 2025 khōréō magazine. Story by Woody Dismukes, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition read by Sam Cavalcanti, with...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreself-harm
"You ever love a place more than people? Mama Patch’s house held me and all my running and snooping without ever forcing me to slow down or stay put. I could run from the rafters down the bang-bang spiral case, then sideways through the six rooms of...
Content warnings 3
homophobiasexual-violenceviolence
"The men knew before she did. Before this boy, before sophomore year, before even her twelfth birthday, they had jostled her on the sidewalk and hooted from cars, searching for something just past her skin. But now, with her panties stripped off and the...
Content warnings 3
goresexual-violenceviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
gorehomophobiaviolence
"At 5:43 a.m. this morning, residents of Grackle Pointe Apartments awoke to a malfunction in their complex’s multi-spatial engine due to an unprecedented derecho that swept through the Montrose area of Houston. This resulted in tenants being mentally and...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgore
"I learned from Bernadette that there are two ways a star can go supernova. The first is in a double star where one partner dies first, turning into a white dwarf, and the surviving partner swells in grief and dumps mass onto the compact star. But the...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"The first time through this cycle, Devaki does not believe he will go through with it. Kasma is her brother, after all, and for all his fears, he didn’t kill her when he had the chance. So as her baby grows inside her, the first fruit of her marriage to...
Content warnings 3
child-deathpregnancy-losssuicide
"Itsy bitsy,” whispers the girl in the glass tank beside mine. Not a girl anymore, not really, but it’s better for my sanity to pretend she’s still human. That we both are. We had names once—and skin, soft to the touch. In the sterile, blinding white...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
A woman talented in the art of spinning–creating pottery by manipulating clay in her mouth–longs to become the best, but wonders if it is worth the sacrifices she must make…
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-oneself-harm
"El detonated the EMP against the feeder’s sensor, a delicate organ that he had only seen in fragments, suspended in cytology slides the shape of dominoes. The lab just days ago had been inundated with new specimens, washed up on the long white beaches...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathself-harm
"The woman’s name was lost in The Fall, as was so much else we once thought vital—seasons, rivers, uncharred air—but her image persists, has become indelible. The giant wall of white upon which her travesties are projected once yearly has become a mecca...
Content warnings 3
goresexual-contentviolence
"1. To kill a language, you must first rip it from living throats. Don't look so askance; you knew it already. The dead can't speak unless called and the only way to prevent our enemies calling upon their own hordes of dead ancestors is to strip their...
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
"Salty swell over my head, tugging me back, the raw and tender creases of my elbows against the forearms they're linked with. Brine up my nose, in my mouth. The anchor of my feet in the sand holds me fast with the rest. The water recedes and we breathe, a...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathsuicide
"Hey cuz! It’s been too long. Love to come out and see your digs. The message hung in the air, glimmering in her Heads Up Display overlaid across the moss garden she was tending. The chill that swept over Euryale made the hair on her arms stand on end and...
Content warnings 2
deathsexual-violence
"I was no friend to the god of high places, of peaks and spires and rope bridges over narrow canyons, and I had no reason to expect that he was a friend of mine. But my mother kept asking, what could it hurt to ask for his favor. What could it hurt to try....
"Kharatet moistens his sightless eyes with his tongue as he draws his finger across the limestone tablet glyphs. His audience today is a clutch of toddling nymphs, motionless save for their short tails rippling the shallow water impatiently. It’s a good...
Content warnings 3
cannibalismdeathgore
"A woman drags a white doe out of the ice room; it hangs from the ceiling rails by two brass hooks, one caught beneath its pelvis and the other behind the scapulae. As she pulls, the metal wheels whine. When she works in her lab, she is a butcher. She lays...
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorgore
"I spent my first summer as an orphan watching cicadas fuck, scream, and molt. Wasn’t long before I plucked one of the cicada skins from the dry village soil. I brushed it clean against my secondhand clothes I was already beginning to outgrow. Dappled by...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoresexual-content
"She’s walking by the river on an overcast day, when sweat runs down her palms, goosebumps all over her neck. The breeze stills. The gray sky turns blood red. Instead of the Sun, through a clearing in the clouds, she finds the Eye. Veins branch across a...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsubstance-usewar
"Joy catches my eye, shuffles my direction. Her face lights the dining room. Her curly gray hair is the sun’s corona, and she seems to float above her walker, needless of her stiff little legs. In seeming slow motion she arrives at the seat across from me....
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"The man in the navy Cosmo Corp suit calls it Self-Reconciliation Therapy, this place they’ve dumped you, where the walls are made of mirrors. But they aren’t mirrors, are they? Sure, you raise a hand, and the woman in the not-mirror waves. God, her...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseself-harmsexual-content
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"Deep in the abyss of the Unholy Bazaar, in a shop that reeked of death and god-blood, Sparrow lay screaming in a web of rope and unbreakable silk. Around her, the Aunties bustled: sawing and rinsing and hammering; cursing, grunting, and muttering; welding...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
"Q: What (or who!) is Eudaimon? A: We are a nonprofit organization that empowers people to live their best lives. A “life,” in our view, is best defined simply as a contiguous sequence of experiences, and thus the best life is the one consisting of the...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Hands trembling, Shiv Mehta snatched the print copy of his wife’s ribcage off the conveyor belt and lowered the print into an organ tank. Those hands had healed thousands of patients, but these days his hands had gotten good at stealing. Over the last few...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"Iris is deep in an empty ocean, gray-green twilight fading to black everywhere she looks—and she can breathe. She’s a thousand feet above the ground, climbing a fractal cliff suffused with flickering veins of electricity—and she cannot. Iris is flat on...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"My sister Angélique found me on a warm spring night. She was not looking for me but for a doctor who could treat women ridden by hags. (Such creatures were properly called soucouyants, but the printers took such liberties with the spelling in my weekly...
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
"Before the cave-in, I’m boiling water over a little fuel stove. It bubbles in the light of my helmet’s headlamp and the low beams of the haul truck. It’s stinking hot but I’m smiling in the pitch black. I’m imagining how my girls are gonna squeal and cry...
Content warnings 1
death
"The house was on the same street as a bakery whose only offering was penis-shaped waffles. Rufaro didn’t like American houses very much. They looked paper thin like doll houses that would lift off into the clouds if a strong wind came by."
Content warnings 1
abuse
"The Whole Foods where Justin works is a block from the beach, close enough to smell it. Apart from the rusting cars in the parking lot and the blood-spattered branches on the Eucalypts, the store looks much the same as it always did. Justin can do his job...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorcannibalismgore
"Folks later claimed she was acting strange from the moment she boarded the plane. They described her as skittish, curt, radiating an aura of danger. Some, when confronted with the security footage, which showed her to have behaved rather unremarkably up...
Content warnings 3
child-deathgoreviolence
"Examination rooms are safe. They stay what they are. The memories they drag to the surface make sense. You assume it’s because you’ve been in so many hospital rooms that your brain is packed with too much realism to have space for the random connections...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"My sister Sera was twelve standard years old when our parents confined her to our family habitat. They kept her there for over a year, and then they died far from home (expedition, landslide). I’ll never know if they were seeking a cure for Sera, or a way...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"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...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
"The story of Chef Buzzati’s sudden and horrifying fall from the heights of fine dining is well known. However, given that the culinary innovations and legal ramifications are still being debated today, a recap may be in order. Elena Buzzati was born to...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorcannibalism
"and in a strip mall parking lot off a side road in some Baltimore suburb my hand is trembling as I take the last of the voidwater in its little bootleg dropper and I peel my eyelid back and though I am so careful and try so hard a bit of the precious...
Content warnings 3
self-harmsubstance-usesuicide
"Downwind from the encampment, the wind stank of refuse. The stench of people weeks into an unwashed trek intensified as Yue Ling limped out of the tree line, raising her hands over her head as she slowly approached the sentries. Both were young, younger...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Chelle’s friend, Wenqian, has everything Chelle doesn’t. A slim figure, pale skin, and most notably the affection of her longtime friend Preston. Like the ocean waves she calls home, Chelle feels transparent and overflowing all at once. So when she’s given...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"Lamia knows hunger. She has known it since the harvests withered, since water stopped falling from the sky, since the animals fled. Even so, she continued living with her family in the cabin on the riverbank. There were four of them: father, mother,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
PseudoPod 807: The Bleak Communion of Abandoned Things is a PseudoPod original. I accept the house in lieu of a settlement. I don’t want Ashley’s dirty money. The house is the least ill-gotten thing she owns, an isolated property she won in a card game and...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathmental-illness
"If you’re reading this—on some godforsaken imageboard, or dog-eared book page, or in encrypted base pairs sequenced off 3D-printed oligos—you’re probably grappling with a pretty tough decision right now. Breathe. I’m not judging you. I know how it goes....
Content warnings 1
pregnancy-loss
"On the first floor of a Colonial-style house constructed last century out of planks of old growth cedar, a monster is dragging a woman’s husband from room to room. The specific path this monster takes will be evident the next morning from the gashes in...
Content warnings 2
abusesexual-violence
"Rhea found the feral child on the edge of the garbage park on the last day of the group’s vacation. Garrison, passed out from drinking the better part of a bottle of hundred-year-old Islay Scotch, had dropped a cigar onto the edge of the canvas tent and...
"The minister’s wife arrives at the Bahrain Ministry of Nanotechnology in a black limousine with dark, tinted windows. She normally eschews the hijab, but today, she’s wrapped in a black abaya with a full face covering, a useful method of concealing her...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"He finds her in his grandpa’s attic, in the Big House. The hatch has been locked up tight since the day Grant Dixon was born—twenty-two years of locked up tight—and long before. He used to ask about it, between the stories his Grandpa Dixon liked to tell. "
Content warnings 3
abuseslaveryviolence
"Pick me up, girl. I’m such a pretty, delicate thing, hidden behind the gondola’s cushion. You feel me before you see me: the soft velvet of the cushions suddenly replaced by the roughness of my lace and the cool touch of my silk. Your fingers are smooth...
"The day they took my mouth hadn’t been spent eating De la Rosas, or smoking, or spitting. In fact, I hadn’t used my mouth in any way that you might expect someone who was about to lose their sense of taste, their tongue, their voice, might have."
"I’ve been feeling a bit down, I suppose,’ Catherine said, ‘and my friend recommended you. She said you might be able to help.’ The doctor made a humming noise. He sat back, folding his arms. ‘Do you know what it means to cleanse, Catherine?’ he asked."
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"So can you do it?” The artisan hesitates, about to turn the page of the sketchbook given to her by, she is realizing, the most important client she might ever have. “Not alone,” she says, and her own honesty surprises her. “Most of the design, what you’re...
"But think—if we succeed, I’ll acquire a whole boxful of memories. Big, jewel-like memories whose sharp edges will tear my master’s world around me like old silk. I’ll escape. Eat a whole orange rather than a mere pip. Oranges are bright, like the sun. Do...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
"Nobody remembers exactly when it started. Probably back in the ’90s when they cloned that sheep, back in the ’10s when they started working on cloning people on the DL, back in the ’20s when the retrovirus broke our genetic virginity. If you’re rich you...
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
Olive’s life changes when her hated little sister’s red wings become visible in her chrysalis, and everyone knows she’ll be the new queen when she emerges.
Ruby is a powerful “Ace” who cynically does dirty jobs for bad people who help her keep her pain under control. Her world changes when a job puts her in contact with an elusive, childish, but very powerful Ace who won’t give in.
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicviolence
Tyler loves being in a boy band, but the label doesn’t want him showing affection for one of the other boys in the band.
Madam Grey sells life insurance to the young men recruited by the Empire to fight in the Grass War. The war goes badly, but she has a chance to end it—at great cost.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abusedeath
Marq knew their spouse would die from the intelligent alien parasite they’d accepted some years ago, but now that the time has come, they have a lot of trouble dealing with it.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Faith’s daughter, one of the first born on the ship, doesn’t look like the other children, and Faith wonders if it’s related to the strange dreams she has.
A ship bound for Europa is rerouted to Titan to help with an emergency at the colony, but on approach, the AI demanded to be given a human body, and the new entity isn’t sure what’s going on.
Content warnings 1
misogyny
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Humanity lives in virtual reality as much as it can, but sometimes there are things you have to do in the real world—no matter how dangerous that is.
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
A terminally ill astronaut begs everyone she can think of to give her a chance at one last mission so she can die in space.
Content warnings 1
death
A family has problems when their little daughter falls out of sync with the usual times everyone else wakes and sleeps. But it’s not just her.
Lukas has grown rich selling his magic wish-fulfillment tea, but he’s dissatisfied, and his wife is looking elsewhere. Two young people come into their lives and everything changes.
Content warnings 2
sexual-contentslavery
After an epidemic killed off half the Earth’s population, Enfys wanders around a depopulated Europe, live blogging the experience and looking for tampons.
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
Toby exchanged his dying teen body for command of a lunar spaceship. He’ll make history if he succeeds, but he’s still just a kid, and it’s dark, cold, and lonely out in space.
Rielle accepts an offer from her husband’s rival to play accompaniment for his daughter in a competition. They need the money, but there’s something too perfect about this daughter.
Kicked out of an elite academy, Suzanne survives on the streets with the help of a mute boy and four reluctant angels. And despite a demon inside her that keeps threatening to break out.
Content warnings 3
child-abuseself-harmsexual-violence
Lia’s mother wants her to dress like a lady, but their city is about to fall to the enemy, and what they really need to do is flee.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
A young woman discovers she has the ability to fly, just as her mother did. But her father thinks there’s something shameful about it, so she tries to suppress it.
Content warnings 2
abuseself-harm
In an Ireland recovering from the great famine of the 2030s, a young woman gets a job with an older doctor who’s growing odd things in her garden.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
It has only been five years since The Fall, but the clinic where teenage Kath works is the only medical service for two hundred miles.
In hopes of getting money to complete his transition, Emrick and his boyfriend visit his wealthy estranged father, who operates a wormhole that links to other dimensions.
Little Kalyani might be autistic, but no one in her village knows what that means. A passing sage offers her a boon, but it’s not at all a cure.
Cloe is a black android built to let white people act out their aggressions.
Content warnings 3
racismsexual-violenceviolence
Maria is a super model in a future that doesn't hesitate to modify the bodies of the models for maximum impact.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
"On Miphre, a planet hardly larger than a moon, jagged mountaintops stab above the cloud cover and harbor small ecosystems in the palms of their hands: rock eels and ribbon mosses and seabirds with rodents clutched to their breasts, each one nestled...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmbody-horrordeath
"She should go back inside the watchpod. Maree and Blaise didn’t have to be dead. The air hadn’t been gone that long. And even if their current bodies were hopeless, damaged beyond repair, probably the back-up system was uncorrupted. Probably its uploads...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoresexual-content
"Udo Gehler saw his next opponent was the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance and didn’t even blink. He’d been curled up in his personal ARMOR lounge, holo-projecting the replay of his last match frame by frame, noting every instance he’d lost momentum or ceded...
Content warnings 3
sexual-violenceviolencewar
"You are no poet. The rest of your clan were. But that was before Half-Brilliant came and began eating them. Before Half-Brilliant began chewing up your people and their minds and spitting the bloody remains over snow-white canvases. Now It is the only...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorslaveryviolence
"The girls of our town float down the middle of the street, cheap fabric wings pinned to their clothes. I watch them walk, hobbled by coat hanger curves that refuse to bend with the bow of their backs. I see Min towards the back. She’s been doing this for...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsexual-violencesubstance-use
Nothing tears two women apart like the men who want and take indiscriminately. In this retelling of “The Crane Wife”, a makeup artist and her actress lover struggle to stay together as the glitz and glamour of old Hollywood transforms into a cruel and...
Content warnings 3
abusemisogynyviolence
"My spirit aches. Reality is severed. I’m trapped in a glass room. Time is water, streaming by. I’m underwater in the current of time, watching time float by. My hand on the room’s thick glass, unable to shatter it, unable to get out. Even if I escape,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorracismsexual-content
"Abigail sat at the centermost position at the cafeteria table. For her, it was unintentional. For us, it was by design. Abigail had no idea about the effect she had on people, obviously. It’s a blessing of having seen yourself in every movie, magazine,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorself-harmviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
abuse
A non-binary disabled woman flees with her infant and toddler from the Arizona Christian secret police who’ve learned they and their wife were running an illegal abortion clinic.
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
With Celia’s mistress missing, and presumed dead, the old, failing android is a prime suspect, but she herself doesn’t remember what happened.
Content warnings 2
sexual-contentsexual-violence
Unexpectedly, you woke up female this morning, in someone else's body. Now you have to decide what to do about it.
Content warnings 3
misogynysexual-contentsexual-violence
Shi handles elderly clients who are recruited to help steer starships through space. Her job is winding up, and one of her last clients presents a special challenge.
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
Out on Europa, Marius has vanished and Kotto has come to rescue his partner, Bolaji.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
When newlyweds Courtney and Josh rent an old Victorian in Baltimore, they're told to stay out of the attic. But they hear noises up there at night. Footsteps.
Content warnings 1
violence
A man sets out on a voyage accompanied by his fiancée's right arm. Content warnings: Violence (graphic), threat of bodily harm, covert misogyny Copyright © 2026 khōréō magazine. Story by Natalia Theodoridou, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition...
Content warnings 2
body-horrormisogyny
A woman returns to burn the last of her mother's body, in the wake of her mother's death — an effort to escape a dark entity that has sealed itself to the bones of three generations of Thai women. Content warnings: Racism, ageism, self-harm, blood,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorracismself-harm
I am not here to talk about how i got my arm, i am looking for hel p trying to fix it . Apologies for typos the f fingers lag a lot
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Ashwan To be born in the year 2615 on the 21st of March was fortuitous, but to be born at 14:59:30 hours on that same day made you a God. […]
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorviolence
If only Serthe'P had been able to fit in, maybe she could have protected —. No. This thought was dangerous. Mnth’R had helped her understand that their isolation had more to do with the Raja’s exploitation of their cast’s fears than any shortcomings of...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Author : Victoria N. Shi Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “milt” first apeared in Fission #5 by the British Science Fiction Association (June 2025) Contains Injury/body horror, climate grief, implied sexual...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsexual-contentviolence
After the braiding, a low buzzing remains in Memoire’s ear. It reminds her of the low buzzing she heard while they shampooed her hair. They told her she could never submerge her head in water after the braiding. No more swimming. No more drifting on her...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
What I’d taken for white beads are actually human teeth, mixed with white crystals I identified (via taste, to Mole’s horror) as salt. Mole looks at the mixture and shudders. I don’t know how to explain why I keep them. As much as I wish to deny the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgore
The first time you killed me, I cried like a baby. Stupid, stupid, to cry over something make-believe—stupid and ugly and pathetic, too, when already the only thing I wanted in the world was for you to find me pretty. I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t expected...
Content warnings 3
abusegoresexual-content
Notes on specimen “Efren Vargas” 1022/204.27.3: >> Supposed to be married to “Joan Dimagiba,” his fiancée. >> Was in bed with some other woman* a week (in human time) before […]
This episode features "Human Studies 401" written by Abby Nicole Yee. Published in the April 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/yee_04_26 Support us...
Look, it’s bad enough that my wife gets cat-called in the street and flashed on the train. There’s a lot of sickos out there who get their jollies by harassing women, and usually I try to shut them down without escalating it to a fight. But we moved a few...
Content warnings 1
sexual-violence
Verity crawled through the endless dark of the tunnel, the false safety of her Colony home now half a mile behind her. All she could see in the dim light […]
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
This episode features "Macaroni Art in the Age of Filtration" written by Ryan Cole. Published in the April 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
Normally, Tillie didn’t mind being the object of everyone’s gaze. But today, the crowd loitering in the street wasn’t drawn to her orange-red curls or her height or regalness. They […]
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
This episode features "Paper Airplane Poet" written by Sheri Singerling. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/singerling_05_26...
Content warnings 3
deathgoresexual-content
Author : Natalie Zutter Narrator : Valerie Valdes Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 930: Parsley Girl, Parsley Girl, Let Down Your Trichobezoar is a PodCastle original. content notes for pregnancy loss, post-natal depression, and...
Content warnings 3
body-horrormental-illnesspregnancy-loss
Author : Anna Kahn Narrator : Nicola Chapman Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 932: Carina is a PodCastle original. Rated PG-13 Carina by Anna Kahn “I’ve had a baby. Still feels strange that you don’t know that — I’ve been looking...
Author : André Geleynse Narrator : Rae Lundberg Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Previously published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #433 Content note for suicide attempts Rated R Last Train from Deadwall PART ONE of Two by André Geleynse...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsuicidewar
Author : Stephanie Burgis Narrator : Tina Connolly Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie Previously published in The Sunday Morning Transport March 2, 2025 Rated G Mail-Order Magic by Stephanie Burgis Shopping online during a bout of brain fog...
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
Author : J. L. Akagi Narrator : Jo Moran Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 947: Why a Spider Needs a Parachute is a PodCastle original. Content notes for domestic violence and spiders. Big — friendly! — spiders Rated R Why a Spider...
Content warnings 3
abusetransphobiaviolence
His app was called Promises Promises, and its download page was one of the last things in Ellie’s search history—behind two hundred chapters of Fruits Basket and six clickbait articles with titles all on the pattern of “17 Spectacular Strategies to...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT Name of Employer: Chaska Punku Space Port Administrative Authority (CPSPAA), based in Chaska Punku, Chile, acting in lieu of the European Space Agency (ESA), based in Paris, France […]
Content warnings 1
body-horror
New Providence sparkled like fool’s gold in the distance, all gleaming spires and whirring clockwork, nothing like the two-bit townships I usually rode through. My Halfie tensed beneath me, his wolf-hackles rising at the stink of machine oil and steam that...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseracismviolence
The sun was sinking toward the horizon like a brass penny dropped in muddy water by the time I rode back into New Providence. My Halfie’s mechanical shoes struck sparks off the metal road plates, each impact sending little jolts of pain through my spine....
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
The wall of the city is made of glass, smooth and clear, slippery and strong. The stranger and his dog wear a path outside it every day, watching, listening, waiting to be ready. The wall is about three times the stranger’s height, perhaps a bit taller. As...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Open your eyes. Look down at your hands. What do you see? Your life is never the same after you get into the car with that bitch Sophia, who was […]
Content warnings 3
abuseself-harmsubstance-use
For Seanan McGuire. And Coyote. Let me tell you about the year Coyote took the Devils to the State Championship. Coyote walked tall down the halls of West Centerville High and where he walked lunch money, copies of last semester’s math tests, and unlit...
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
"At night, Olivia becomes a spider. She scurries down San Francisco streets, floats gently between cotton-candy-colored houses, and hides behind signs for trendy restaurants, like Trough and Instance. By day, she works as a software engineer for a company...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
Author : N.K. Jemisin Narrator : Stephanie Malia Morris Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Valedictorian” was originally published in After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia. It then appeared in Escape Pod 450, and in a...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Nerves Into Circuits By Lyra Meurer Metal arms descend to press skin-soft conductor strips over my shoulders. The Neurasuit has been in warming mode for a few minutes–my overwrought senses accept the lines of heat like a gift. Despite my anxiety for the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsuicideviolence
"At 2:26am, police were radioed in to a casualty at a residence in (redacted), according to witness accounts and the child present at the home, a woman was found deceased at the bottom of the stairs. There were no signs or history of domestic violence....
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abuseself-harm
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrormental-illnessself-harm
"We are very, very disappointed.” It was her third try, and it still came out feebly. “We thought we made it super clear that any, any change in material, maker hand, machine, or method, however small or irrelevant it may seem, must be notified...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-abuseself-harm
Author : Sylvie Althoff Narrator : Serah Eley Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 955: Endymion is an Escape Pod original. Contains transphobic slur, adult language, and brief but graphic violence Endymion by Sylvie Althoff It’s...
Content warnings 3
goretransphobiaviolence
Code Switching By Malon Edwards [JEAN-MICHEL] INTRO: ALL I'M EVER GON' DO IS STAY BLACK AND DIE JEAN-MICHEL FEAT. KINSLEY CHASE Kinsley Chase sits on manman mwen plastic-covered couch. The InTell HumbleBrag subprogram Stanford Sutton Industries chipped me...
Content warnings 1
racism
Author : Grace Chan Narrator : Andrew K. Hoe Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars was originally published in Clarkesworld Issue 178 (July 2021) He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars by...
Author : Avi Burton Narrator : M. Darusha Wehm Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 879: Triptych is an Escape Pod original. Content warnings for gender dysphoria, and threats of gun violence Triptych by Avi Burton Delaney didn’t...
Content warnings 2
transphobiaviolence
Author : MKRNYILGLD Narrator : Premee Mohamed Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “The CRISPR Cookbook: A Guide to Biohacking Your Own Abortion in a Post-Roe World” originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine (September 2022). Abortion,...
Content warnings 3
misogynypregnancy-losssexual-violence
If My Body Is a Temple, Raze It to the Ground By Lauren Ring Thea helped me with my upload today. Decent response speed. Props to whoever designed her—so realistic! — anonymous customer review for Acheron Uploads, four out of five stars I know, I know....
Content warnings 3
abusemisogynyslavery
Author : Rachael K. Jones Narrator : Christiana Ellis Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant” originally appeared in Lightspeed in December 2017, and in The Best American Science Fiction...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorcannibalismgore
Build-A-Body By Avi Burton When I was eighteen, I ordered a body off the internet. It was actually kind of easy. I was old enough to remember when the first successful human transfer was performed— the consciousness of a paralyzed young man was dropped...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
Vi'hun Heal By Michelle Tang The entrance panels, currently assuming the appearance of Earthian saloon doors, slid open. I rippled a welcoming cadence of light beneath my skin, and then, seeing the newcomer was human, made my best approximation of a smile....
Content warnings 3
goreslaverywar
Author : Phoenix Alexander Narrator : Nicola Chapman Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 832: Mouthfeel is an Escape Pod original. Mouthfeel by Phoenix Alexander 2050 After she left him, he found cells of hers...
Author : R.S.A. Garcia Narrator : Maxine Moore Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (Issue 172, January 2021), and is a finalist for the 2022 Ignyte Award for Best Novella...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseslaveryviolence
Love and Supervillains By Caroline Diorio The gals here at the Raleigh Women’s Asylum for the Nefariously Gifted have a little saying they like to share with the newbies: fuck a superhero once, shame on him; fuck a superhero twice, shame on you. Well,...
Content warnings 3
cannibalismgoresexual-content
Across the River, My Heart, My Memory By Ann LeBlanc 1. I am Michelle’s artificial pancreas, stolen cleanly and carefully from her gut. The surgeons are quick; before I can finish my hard reset, they place me inside you. I don’t even have time to say...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Author : C.C. Finlay Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Time Bomb Time” originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of Lightspeed Magazine. It was reprinted in Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy...
Content warnings 1
abuse
The Princess, NP By Brian Hugenbruch I sat in the Commander’s office at Hexa Station, in clothes that stank of subspace, and the only polite thing I could do to drown out the universe was compute obscene sums in my head. It didn’t stop the sounds from...
Content warnings 1
abuse
The Pill (Part 1 of 2) By Meg Elison My mother took the Pill before anybody even knew about it. She was always signing up for those studies at the university, saying she was doing it because she was bored. I think she did it because they would ask her...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
By Meg Elison (Continued from Part 1) The Pill sold like nothing had ever sold before. The original, the generic, the knockoffs, the different versions approved in Europe and Asia that met their standards and got rammed through their testing. There was at...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-content
Deal By Eris Young Beulah wonders what it would be like to touch the Visitor. Oil-slick iridescent, it is tennis ball-sized and scaled with an animated crystalline skin—or shell—or carapace. It floats, stationary, a foot above the rug in the corner of the...
Content warnings 3
illness-and-pandemicself-harmtransphobia
Author : Gwynne Garfinkle Narrator : Alethea Kontis Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in GigaNotoSaurus (March 2020) Contains cursing and discussions of sex. A Wild Patience (Part 1 of 3) by Gwynne...
Content warnings 2
misogynysexual-content
Report of Dr. Hollowmas on the Incident at Jackrabbit Five By T. Kingfisher The following report is from the Jackrabbit Colony, Five Tau, regarding the incidents occurring during 7-5-11-8881, fifth rotation, involving Marine Midwife Unit Eleven-Gamma....
Author : Jennifer Lee Rossman Narrator : Ellora Sen-Gupta Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 786: The Steel Magnolia Metaphor is an Escape Pod original. Contains mentions of cancer and death. The Steel Magnolia...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Ascend, Exalt, Love, Propagate, Rise! By Sarah Kumari The Glory smolders through Jehanne's bloodstream, pulsing its encouragement. The rivals who have survived along with him–officially 'Fellow Eminents' now that selection is over–twitch and moan as their...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsexual-violenceviolence
Author : Jaxton Kimble Narrator : Mat Weller Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 788: Broken (Flashback Friday) is an Escape Pod original. Contains a couple intimate moments. Broken by Jaxton Kimble My favorite...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssexual-content
A Dragon in Two Parts By Kiya Nicoll “‘Shed your skin and spread your wings to fly’,” I read off the sign. The letters were done in a sort of swooshy font and punctuated by yellow and blue yin-yangy things at either end. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable...
Content warnings 1
suicide
"The shoes are leather with delicate lines and pointy toes. Elegant shoes for elegant feet. They might have suited her too if she had yesterday’s feet. Chicken’s feet. But today her feet are that of an otter’s, stubby and covered in wet, glistening fur....
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
Consolidation By Langley Hyde Lot 1796. Adult. Human. Female bodied. Standard limbs/digits. Immune/health function: class 7, can accommodate high-risk activity. Personality type: reactive/adaptive, ideal for customer service/high-level social interaction....
Content warnings 3
body-horrorviolencewar
Jolene by Fiona Moore “I’ve got a case for you,” said Detective Inspector Wilhemine FitzJames. “It’s a country singer whose wife, dog and truck have all left him.” “Seriously,” she said, after my unprintable reply. “The dog died and there’s nothing much...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
Vlad’s an immortal vampire and his girlfriend Eliza stays in suspended animation most of the time while they travel the stars looking for a planet where they can be happy together.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
sexual-violencesubstance-use
Teenage friends Domei and Hano live in a refugee camp for survivors of a war fought with dragons.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorviolencewar
In El Paso, Mary flees her abusive husband and runs into one of the space aliens who have destroyed Mexico.
Content warnings 3
abuseracismviolence