Meimei dates really bad guys. Who want to use her. Who don't know what they're in for.
Content warnings 5
abusebody-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
Dark
887 free-to-read stories tagged “Dark”
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
body-horrorchild-deathdeathviolence
Following a disaster in Antarctica, MacReady spends summer 1983 in New York and starts to wonder what he might have brought back with him.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-useviolence
Rhye a bitter ex-supersoldier, fights to rescue Rack, her hacker partner in crime, after the criminals they're working for kill Rack's body while his mind is in cyberspace.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathgoreviolence
In a magical Old West, young Ellis has a love for the desert and an affinity for dead things. Both of these attract unwelcome attention from strangers visiting from back East.
Content warnings 4
abusebody-horrordeathviolence
In this provocative and rich retelling of the Greek myth, Orpheus, the musician son of Apollo and Calliope, successfully rescues his wife Eurydice from Hades after her untimely death.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
The Regent rules as a tyrant, and he has separated Saffron from her husband to force him to bake the amazing confections that let you relive bits of the past.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
The girl he killed was much more than merely human, and there will be consequences.
Content warnings 4
deathmisogynysexual-violenceviolence
Teenage Tetley lives in a human settlement (one of the last) built on a miles-wide floating garbage dump. She explains why everyone hates her now.
Content warnings 4
deathsexual-violencesubstance-useviolence
"My country may seem strange to you. There are times when it seems strange to me. I wake and work. I work then rest. And in between I say things, and I don’t say things. Because, as you’ll learn, in my country, what you say is important. But what you don’t...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
The vampires aren’t even the worst part about being a teenage trans girl on tumblr.
Content warnings 9
abusechild-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onegoremisogynysexual-violencesubstance-usetransphobiaviolence
In 1943 India, during the Bengal Famine, the Governor of Bengal tries to force an old woman to make a doll for his wife.
Content warnings 5
child-deathdeathracismviolencewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"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
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
"It was half past midnight when Olga heard the Devil cry. They were supposed to be wild tonight, the three of them. Cassandra had led the way and Maria and Olga didn’t put up much of a fight. They would visit the Devil’s bridge—anything that claimed to be...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
animal-harmchild-deathdeath
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 6
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicmisogynysexual-violenceviolence
"There’s a woman outside of a town called Sheridan, where the sky comes so near to earth it has to use the crosswalk just like everybody else. … There’s a woman outside of Sheridan and she is eating the sin of America."
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
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 2
body-horrordeath
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathsexual-contentsubstance-use
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.
Sera does a great job at search and rescue, but she has conflicts with her handler, who has trouble coping with an enhanced intelligence dog.
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
After terrorists spring her from cryo-prison, talented hacker Girasol goes into cyberspace to help them target the rich businessman who put her in prison in the first place.
Content warnings 3
sexual-violencesubstance-useviolence
"From the first time I visited Mariah Lee-Cassidy in prison, she radiated defiance. The poisonous orange of her prison jumpsuit might have been the decision of the state, but everything else about the twenty-nine-year-old, from her aggressively spiked hair...
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
The narrator and a friend plot to steal a valuable artwork from an underworld boss who’s pissed them off.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
‘Nisha only has five hours to get across New York to her dead aunt’s apartment before the city comes to throw away all her stuff. She’s not even sure it’s worth it, but they said her aunt was a witch…
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Technically dead after a terrorist attack, Asante gets a new body and second chance at life, provided he serves 5 years as an experimental supersoldier.
Content warnings 3
child-deathviolencewar
Benji was an ordinary terrier until his master decided to have him sentientized.
Content warnings 2
animal-harmviolence
A young woman is murdered in Armstrong City, Luna, and both the police and organized crime want to understand why. Captivating.
Content warnings 1
death
"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
A two-person crew embark on a mind-bending deep space mission inside a living wormship capable of burrowing through space. What lies on the other end is unknown—as is what they will do once they get there.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 5
deathmental-illnesssexual-violencesubstance-useviolence
A day laborer hired to clean up a flooded creek outside of Boulder, Colorado uncovers what could be a valuable find—if it doesn't kill him first.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
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
Helen comes to Meersee in Germany to be a governess for her friend’s nephew. The child is young and peculiar, the staff are old and peculiar, and more peculiar things turn up by the minute.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 5
body-horrorchild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In 2001, just before the attacks, a girl out West has a very close encounter with space aliens.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathgoresexual-violenceviolence
"A dual-carriage road descends from a flyover bridge in Thamesmead, bearing sluggish traffic on both sides. From inside bus number 229, a woman looks out of the large windows and thinks the other vehicles look like toy cars. For all she knows, the 229...
Content warnings 5
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-onemental-illnessviolence
In one small town, the delicate balance between predator and prey is threatened when five girls are murdered on prom night.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
abusedeathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"In the beginning, June and Nat are best friends. June is not yet a swarm of honeybees and Nat is not yet a cloud of horseflies, and the king hasn’t yet decided that separating them into parts like this—June’s left pinky finger one bee, her left ring...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
It’s been two years since Jenna’s ex-boyfriend left her alone in East Texas heartbroken. Now he’s back in town and she wants to payback. One night, she stumbles upon a bloodthirsty Camaro that may be the key to carrying out her revenge.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"Alvin was slumped in the passenger seat of the open-top Willys terraplane. Two thousand feet below us, the Black Sea lived up to its name: a sheet of ebony darker than the sky above, its featureless surface relieved only by the scattered flecks of night...
Content warnings 1
violence
"For a long time, I wondered what kind of person would volunteer to have their skin exposed to temperatures cycling between the melting point of aluminium and the night-time surface temperature of Mercury, riding a wave of thermal torment that would drive...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathhomophobiasuicide
In mid-winter, a skeletal stag comes to the village begging for food, but it eats anyone foolish enough to talk to it.
Content warnings 4
body-horrorcannibalismdeathviolence
"He spoke once, the words whispered by frozen lips on a face so frostbitten he looked like a porcelain doll. I found him below the summit as our expedition bottlenecked before the Hillary Step on our final ascent of Mount Everest. And above the bottleneck,...
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
Samantha searches Paris to try to find what’s killing fallen angels.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
Laburnum castle hosts key nobles from across the kingdom as well as the king himself for an enormous feast--a feast that's equivalent to a war.
Content warnings 2
deathwar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
child-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesuicideviolence
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
"Episode 60 Transcription by @jbutler22 0:01 Murray: Hey there, I’m Dean Murray and this is a special episode of Homewrecker. We’re on the road this week, heading up to historic [garbled] where we’ll venture [garbled] outside the city to see the colonial...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneself-harm
"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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathviolence
Exchange of pathogens has largely replaced traditional sex, but the archipelago has run out of new diseases, so four friends go to the mainland in search of new plagues.
Content warnings 3
child-deathsexual-contentviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusedeathsubstance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
A young man spends all he has to care for his sister who lies in a coma. Or so it seems.
Draiken kidnaps a hired killer from a space station and spirits him away for a “demonstration.” But what sort of demonstration could possibly change the man’s mind?
Content warnings 1
violence
Humanity is under attack from intelligent creatures we never knew about from the abyss of our own oceans. Cally is a researcher trying to communicate with them when the underwater facility she’s on is attacked and she has to escape before it disintegrates entirely.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
Excelsior lives to write songs, and Nightingale was made to sing them. But the decadent city of Owl Abbas does not deserve either one.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
In 12th-Century England, six-year-old Ada flees the vicious reptilian wastoures who swam the countryside eating people and animals alike.
Content warnings 4
body-horrorchild-abusedeathviolence
Dora Rose's whole family have been slaughtered. Maurice saves her because he loves her, and is ready to help her get revenge. Even though he's a rat and she's a swan in their true forms.
Content warnings 2
genocideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusesexual-violenceviolence
"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
A woman visiting Las Vegas for a fun weekend encounters her ne’er-do-well ex-husband, who begs her for a favor that gambles with life and death…
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"The campsite looks like it wants to eat them. A fire pit yawns in the middle, an ashy-grey mouth ringed by rocks like rotting teeth. The trees crowd in, sizing them up, knifing the daylight. One gulp of that smoke-and-pine air, and Henry shudders head to...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"I was kinda worried about being the new kid, but apparently new kids are cool here. This guy named Scott Marsh who seems pretty popular and has a good jump shot was really nice to me, so the other guys were nice to me, too. I think maybe because me and...
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abuseviolence
"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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorcannibalismviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"There’s a dog in this house. A not-quite-a-dog. An undog. I heard its whimpering the first week I slept here, the thump, thump, thump of its bulky legs on the old tiles. I found long brown hair mixed with dust bunnies where the walls met. When there’s a...
Content warnings 2
abuseanimal-harm
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
Allie and Rooster are heading down to Asheville for Rooster’s new gig, a cushy stint as artist-in-residence at UNC. ... But when they stumble upon an old backcountry church—the perfect backdrop for Rooster’s latest project—they discover that some...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"It began, as most things do, simply enough. In a simple neighbourhood, on the edge of a town. Too urban to be rural, too rural to be urban. Women grew old. Some women aged with their children, grandchildren, family around them. Some grew old alone,...
Content warnings 3
goresexual-violenceviolence
"A girl has lost her soul down deep in the City. It wandered away while she chipped out another grave in the catacomb brickyards. She set down her pickax, wiped grit from her cheek, and noticed how empty her body was. Looked down at her wrist and found it blank."
Content warnings 2
self-harmviolence
"Her name was Alyssa, and nobody knew who she was. When she was a child, perhaps, her mother had known. But that was long ago, when she was somebody else. As a young woman she had sometimes dropped clues leading like a trail of breadcrumbs into the dark...
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
"He could hear her voice more clearly now, as though the notepad were merely a synchronizing gear between the two minds caught in his head. She sounded sick and frightened and tired—like a young woman trapped alone in a strange place, not like a witch...
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Joy nearly got lost on the root-knotted red dirt path off of Highway 99, losing sight of the gaps between the live oaks and Spanish moss that fanned across her hood and windows like fingertips. Driving back to her family’s cabin twenty years later...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Dez is abandoning his acting career in mourning for Cherie, his one true love. But there is a technology that can temporarily bring her back—or something like her, anyway.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsubstance-useviolence
On a decades-long journey to another star, two men take shifts managing the sleeping crew, but after a year or two, they’re ready to kill each other.
Content warnings 1
violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
Draiken and Thorne seek out a torturer they once knew in hopes he can lead them to surviving leaders of the organizations they once worked for but are now sworn to destroy.
Content warnings 1
abuse
After 700 years of isolation, the colony faces invasion from fellow humans. Fleeing from the destruction of her home town, Senne hooks up with four soldiers trying to find what’s left of their unit.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathsexual-violenceviolence
To return to power, the godlike Hollow Ones recruit Spear to kill the Great Beasts that hold the laws of reality in place, and Hark to cook them so they can absorb their power. Only one remains before the end of the world as they know it.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-abusechild-deathsexual-violence
On a cold October midnight, teenage Susanna takes her dog and a musket and sneaks away into the woods. Things happened ten years ago when she got the dog. Bad things. And now the reckoning is due.
Content warnings 3
animal-harmchild-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
Only Marianne can see that her new brother-in-law is a horror, and although she knows she can summon the faeries to get rid of him, she also knows the price will be very high.
Content warnings 4
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onepregnancy-lossviolence
A police detective tries to cope with an attractive female robot who confesses to murder.
Content warnings 3
goremisogynyviolence
Tonight the hero risks her family to battle the Kaiju Maximus, one of the enormous aliens that drove most of humanity underground.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrormental-illness
"November 1938 “What we are looking for,” said the doctor, “are photographs to help us document the treatment’s effect upon the patient. We need a picture before the treatment and afterward. Those are for the hospital files. But we also want photos taken...
Content warnings 3
homophobiamental-illnessviolence
Hacksilver riddled with a dragon, saved his family’s farm, and won the secret to raise his dead. Nothing prepared him, though, for the long cold winter when the dead walked…and his family came back!
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
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
"When the vault in the abandoned coal mine collapsed, it took four days for the engineers to complete their inspection and certify that it was safe for law enforcement personnel to enter the site. Beth drove out from town with her deputy, Ken Osgood, and...
Content warnings 1
suicide
"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
"No signs protect the backyards in this part of town from the Marl Pits Forest. There’s no treeline either. Of course there isn’t. But even in the dark, you can’t really miss where the forest starts—not if you’ve lived a childhood in the wilderness here...
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Pusetso’s research assistant lay in pieces on the floor with his head between his chest, back open, cracked solar panels splayed on the office table. A mess of tangled multicolored wires dangled from the bottom of his torso—rainbow innards. His legs, the...
Content warnings 1
violence
"Outside is the palace of slaughter. Under its gambrels of boiling sky, there is the cold unforgiving sea; there are mountains ready to cradle your bones. Along its corridors of singing grass, there are horseback warriors who will cut you to pieces. There...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmgoreviolence
"Imagine: purple-haired girl shooting down the moon.” I type the prompt into the black screen as if making a request to God. The blurred shape of a head appears in four variations over a pixelated ocean of gray. The eyes, corrugated whites, slowly take...
Content warnings 3
abusesexual-contentviolence
An all-but-forgotten demigod bets everything on one last gambit to secure his future before he fades from existence. Copyright khōréō magazine 2022. Story by Guan Un, edited by Rowan Morrison. Audio edition read by Guan Un, edited by Lian Xia Rose, with...
Content warnings 1
violence
"Tana was in a humid cave checking the rind on a round of Tomme when the messenger arrived to tell her that the war was lost and her wife was to be hanged. She took her time rewrapping the cheese before she responded. Still too soft. Another week, she...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"I don’t want to say goodbye, but with dawn brushing Ri’s warm forehead, I can’t help kneeling by her bed and saying, “Wake up, darlin, Ma’s going out.” Jer’s look asks why I’d ever do anything different, and why’d we have that whole fight about it last...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
For Grant Rutherford, work is both life and legacy — but when he dies a mere week after his wife, what he leaves behind will have metaphysical reverberations he could never have foreseen. Content warnings: Grief, medicalized illness, death of a loved one...
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
"You ready?” asked the first man, his face pockmarked, lips leering, eyes sullen. “Light’em up,” replied the second. The third nodded his head and produced the gasoline. They knew the children slept inside. No one had to tell them. The Freedmen’s School in...
Content warnings 3
child-deathracismviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneracismviolence
"Besides the vedma who lived behind the stove in steam room three, the banya in Grand Lake Plaza was the same as any other budget day spa on Chicago’s West Side. It had deep-tissue massages and signature facials, plus day passes for the communal baths and...
Content warnings 3
abusesexual-violenceviolence
"Once upon a time, in that place right near to us, there lived a man and a woman, together as man and wife, though, like most peasants, no one had married them nor given them any word. It was simply that their love for each other was stronger even than...
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abuseviolence
"Kyle heard the hiss and rattle of a small air compressor, punctuated by periodic beeps from somewhere near his head. He wondered why he couldn’t see them; then he realized his eyes were closed. So he opened them. Shari was right there, face tight with...
Content warnings 3
deathracismviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-abusedeath
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorwar
When the Dynast dies, his daughter Lin flees before her older siblings can kill her. She has a place of safety in mind, but she’s never been there herself and needs help to get in.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"The ghost ship Xanthic Promise sails the black, powered by the slumbering heart of a dying star. And its captain, Antimony Jones, stalks its decks in a swirl of crimson coat and fox fire lighting, dogged by voices. The recent dead, the long dead, and the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
The carpenter on a Nantucket whaler hears a dreadful warning from an African god his ancestors once called upon when they were taken into slavery. But will anyone listen to him?
Content warnings 2
deathracism
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnessviolence
Attacked by endless flocks of ravens, the Bjebu people flee their village to a strange place controlled by a strange god, who grants them safety in exchange for “three offerings of sorrow.”
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
An aspiring young stage magician meets an older magician over coffee to try to convince him to share some of his tricks. And to show him a few of his own.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
animal-harmchild-death
Sentient characters in a massive online multiplayer game exploit a flaw in the operating system to escape to a safe place that’s only rumored to exist.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Two series meet in this crossover episode where ex-assassin Draiken’s search for justice is interrupted when he’s arrested by ace prosecutor Andrea Cort.
Content warnings 1
violence
As a composer, D’Isle knows that the Bloodlords tightly control music because it can attract demons from the forest. He’s alarmed when his new prima donna starts improvising illegally.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 6
body-horrorchild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-onesubstance-useviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Action, Adventure, Tragedy, Victory—with Lots of Cats.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
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
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
Shemesh returns from his mission on planet Kadesh to face inquisition by the Exiliarch. What really happened when he met the heretic there?
Content warnings 1
violence
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 8
abusedeathgoreillness-and-pandemicsexual-contentsubstance-usesuicideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 5
body-horrorcannibalismdeathgoreviolence
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 4
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicviolence
"When I was little, I drew dragons and leviathans in my room, stomach down on my bed or tipping my chair back and staring at the ceiling like the lines would rearrange into inspiration. Now I swipe my fingerprint through three levels of security and...
Content warnings 1
death
"It’s cruel of the soldiers to come when Mama is so sick and so pregnant. I tell this to Dijkstra, and she agrees. Then she goes to Mama and clambers into her lap, which is now too small to hold me and almost too small to hold Dijkstra, and says it in a...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathviolence
"A scream rises from the bush. One last call to the living: a warning of pain. Katarina’s heard that same sound more times than she’s had hot dinners but still a ribbon of unease unfurls in her gut. She sets her cleaver down for a moment, shifting from one...
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathsuicide
"For a long time now I’d been practicing liecraft five or six times before breakfast. I’d roll over to Khao’s side of the bed and murmur through the curls of hair winding around his ear: “Go back to sleep, it’s only just daybreak.” Other times I’d hide his...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-abuseviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoresuicide
"When my parents heard I was selected to serve in the Alariel’s shining palaces, I think it broke them. Letters made of actual paper were so expensive that I ran as soon as the drone handed the envelope to me. I banged open the front door of our tiny...
Content warnings 1
violence
"We drove out to Joshua Tree for the star party—a gathering of amateur astronomers under a clear, dark sky. It was Holly’s idea, an impromptu adventure on a Friday after work: “Hey, Lou, do you want to go look at the moon tonight?” Holly had the best ideas...
Content warnings 2
child-deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrordeath
"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
"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...
"Never forget you are their monster. That’s the first rule we tell you, crammed between us in the back of Paola’s dad’s vintage ’22 Dodge Challenger, his project car he lets her borrow, with slick wheels and faux-leather seats that make our Sangrona noses...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"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
"It takes a Black woman to tell the truth about another Black woman, whether she likes that woman or not. If the woman in question is loved, the story reaches mythological heights, she could do no wrong, she was brown skinned and beautiful, intelligent,...
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
"I walk into Old Town. In a curio shop on the promenade, an old man sells paintings, deras, kikois, and ornaments. Tuk-tuks move swiftly along the cabro paving, passing the teapot sculpture at the round-about. Pushcarts lumber beside the street restaurants...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathwar
"The coffin lies at the curb, tilted aslant on the strip of grass next to the sidewalk. Old Mr. Byerly spies it on an evening walk through his suburban neighborhood. It’s been put out alongside a pile of other discards—an old-fashioned lawn mower, a...
Content warnings 2
child-abusedeath
"Taffy’s bedroom was a bit too warm, but I sensed that the chamber itself was cold. Couldn’t feel it of course. It was just a projection from Geneva. And it was probable that none of the people I faced were really at ARM’s Geneva facility at all. The...
Content warnings 2
animal-harmsuicide
"A small asteroid swerved in a most un-asteroid-like way and pierced the hull of the archivist’s ship, as though it was determined to drive her away. But she was just getting started. She slammed the emergency foam release button, holding her breath even...
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-abuseself-harmsexual-violence
"When Golem opened her eyes for the first time, she saw Magda. “You are Golem,” Magda whispered, her oil-stained fingers prodding Golem’s metal joints. “Golem,” the machine repeated, the rust along the two half-tin cans forming her jaw chipping onto...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
"The oval fruit, uneven on all sides even when it’s ripe, is not just for eating. Spaces in the dust roads filled with reddish-brown wind are what she sees in her lost childhood. Jolainne wants to tell you, to tell anyone who’ll listen, of hiding in the...
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusesexual-violence
"What do you mean, Why didn’t I warn them before? Are you serious? I did! Answer me this if you are so smart. If you had seen it, what would you have done? It all began with a scrap of fabric I used to test the machine’s tension. Over and over and over,...
Content warnings 1
death
"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
Babysitting/bodyguarding a group of rich kids should be easy money, especially for a tough joker-ace like Khan—provided he doesn’t end up killing them himself.
Content warnings 1
violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusesexual-violence
In 19th-Century Texas, a German immigrant mother defends her farm and family (in the absence of her husband and eldest son) against a vicious wolf as well as some of the local townspeople.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onegore
A child struggles with the loss of his big brother and his feelings that maybe things are better without him—and maybe he’s not really gone.
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"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
"A twinge of nausea rose, but Kym drove it back, swallowed in a dry throat, and looked down at the list again... The whole idea of a list of targeted names sickened her, but this had to be done. It would require all her strength and more fortitude. She had...
Content warnings 1
violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorhomophobiaself-harm
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathslaveryviolence
Two men seeking a better understanding of the decks of magic cards they carry find trouble instead.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
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
An occult detective and a creature work and love together across multiple lifetimes.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
Anell takes a job with a great house researching immortality, but she secretly works on her own research involving reproduction.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathracism
As Charlotte’s husband sinks into early Alzheimer’s, he becomes more and more obsessed with a cult religious figure known only as The Reverend.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathsubstance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
Danae’s mom has turned into a plant, and she’s hard up for cash, so she takes a risky delivery job from a guy who’s turning into a book.
Content warnings 1
violence
Nuhu bought his wife from the Djinn, but she hasn’t turned out to be what he wanted, and now the Djinn want’s his first-born child in payment.
Content warnings 2
misogynyslavery
In the aftermath of the king’s assassination, the guard commander and high mage struggle to discover who was behind it and what to do about it.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
In which we learn how bad translations averted a war and led to lasting peace.
Content warnings 2
misogynywar
A songwriter and her boyfriend seclude themselves at his old family cabin back in the woods to work on a new album. But in the isolation, she has trouble getting work done, and reality itself seems a little off.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Ten years ago, all the members of the IRIS band died in an accident, and Ruriko blames herself. She keeps visiting robot constructed with the personalities of the band members hoping to find absolution.
Content warnings 2
deathself-harm
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
self-harmsexual-contentsuicide
Two American men come to a town on the Tibetan plateau to see how they extract clean air from the high slopes that they can sell to the public.
The hard-boiled narrator runs investigations in cyberspace and reality. This time they’ve got a murder to solve, and it’s proving a challenge—even though they saw it happen.
Content warnings 1
sexual-violence
Teenage Marisol wants a Razzibot so she can stream her life online in ways that always make her look good.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-abusechild-deathviolence
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
Summer of 1955, the last summer of high school. Mike remembers his girlfriend and how wonderful it was being in love. And he remembers the awful things that happened at the end.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
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
In 1912 Cairo, the police investigate the apparent murder of an immortal Djinn.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
In 1915 Ohio, 14-year-old Emmett's night terrors get worse after he finds a dead body in an abandoned well.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
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
"Dear Francesca, First off: I know that’s not your name. I haven’t gone and mistaken you for another woman—one of my many conquests, I imagine you imagine (what must imaginary you think of imaginary me?). You’ll notice, if you glance ahead, that I’ve...
Content warnings 1
sexual-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
"Wendy knew it wouldn’t be long now before her daughter was taken. She had put the idea from her mind as long as she could, but now Jane was days away from turning thirteen. From the window of the nursery, Wendy saw Jane wobbling her way down Kensington...
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
A traumatized time traveler keeps traveling back to his past to punish his younger self. Over multiple loops, he learns to forgive himself. Copyright khōréō magazine 2025. Story by Samir Sirk Morató, edited by Danai Christopoulou. Audio edition read by...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseself-harmviolence
Two ex-military nurses, one human and one alien, share a friendship in a city following an alien invasion.
Content warnings 3
racismviolencewar
"Blackheel Lysha put down a fine table of grub for breakfast: pinky beans, cornbread, boiled shellbird eggs, roast marsh hen legs, and a gooey gumbo of okra and sweetcrab. And what a nice longhouse too, with rare glass windows to keep all the nasty sooty...
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorself-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
"My ghost bled through the shadows, an icy wind stirring the leaves. Eyes like candle flames shuddering and crescent moon mouth, it had found me as a girl and never let go—the only thing that was really mine. It led me to an overgrown graveyard, pelts of...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
"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
"Post-flight debrief. Subject: Michael Ackine, of the Astronomic Endeavors cargo ship, Zephyr One. Introductory notes: Mr. Ackine is the only survivor of the Zephyr’s maiden voyage. Z-One landed safely, five Earth days overdue and two kilometers from...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
gorehomophobiaviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
"Oscar’s Digital Double comes two hours, thirty-eight minutes, and eleven seconds late. Maxine snatches the package from the delivery drone and doesn’t tip. She rearranged her day—went to HMart right when it opened, skipped the gym, cooked Grandma a quick...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathsuicide
A woman returning to her family’s home town for a wedding discovers why people in Connorville—including her family—might be more than they seem.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
"The first time Knucklebone tried to kill himself, he’d already been dead for one hundred and thirteen years. He’d died in a workplace accident, which meant it was within their legal rights for the Cogsmith Railroad Company to bind his soul to his...
Content warnings 3
suicideviolencewar
"A garden is a joy, but also a labor. It is no small thing to call forth life from the desert; do not imagine any but a witch could do it so well. Every day I draw flowers from sand, shrubs from sand; I turn sand to grass as rich as cream. The garden is...
Content warnings 1
slavery
The spirit of a recently deceased young boy helps a group of ghosts seek revenge on a corrupt and abusive town minister.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
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
"The angel Azrael rode the dead horse across a broken plain that went on so long he lost track of the days. The empty heavens gave him no clues, for the sun seemed to linger just beyond the horizon without actually making an appearance. As if it were as...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
"What lies beyond the Sea of Beasts is known to few, for few are foolish enough to try and cross it. This is not because of the beasts, which all died so long ago their bones have turned to stone, but because it is ghastly. Most of the fish are spiny and...
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death
"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
"Police detective Hector Kovack couldn’t take the bullet back. He lay in the gray, predawn ooze of a hungover Martian Tuesday morning, twisting the thought with all his might. Or trying. Drunk, hungover or sober, the truth wouldn’t twist. No matter how...
Content warnings 2
substance-useviolence
"He took the elevator up to the nineteenth, just like the email said. Elevator ding, white tile, and he crossed the hall through a set of glass doors. “Can I help you?” the receptionist asked from behind a curving white counter. “I have an interview at...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"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
"Tyler Moore’s spells strive to exist in and of themselves. They make no excuse or justification for their existence: no promise to speak to the dead, predict next year’s grain or gold prices, or read the mind of lawyers during a hostile takeover. They are...
"I request a poison pill, in case I decide to kill myself today.” “It is your right to do so,” says the interrogator, “Here is your pill.” This is the scripted question and the standard answer. Both the interrogator and the captive scientist have recited...
Content warnings 1
violence
"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
A deluxe riverboat welcomes the galaxy's wealthiest tourists to the drought-ridden Amazon — but no one's seen her mysterious captain. "The Maiden Voyage of the Piranha Belle" is a flash exploration of colonization and survival. Content warnings:...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"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
"Two hours out of deadsleep is too soon to be staring at the butchered corpse of a dead god. Neel looks down as the kalipeeli begins its descent to Chowpatty Beach and feels his stomach flip."
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgore
"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
"Good morning, Akasma.” I say these words to my spaceship every day, whether it is a good morning or not, because she is the only being I can safely talk to, and she has said she likes my voice, froggy and raspy though it may be. My spaceship is not, for...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
In celebration of the 50th World Fantasy Convention’s Toastmaster, Michael Swanwick, Reactor presents a new Mongolian Wizard story about a battle to save Paris from an unexpected new enemy.
Content warnings 3
goreviolencewar
"Finneus Lark finds the man nestled inside of the abdominal cavity of a doe, his skin so pale that his veins are like spiderwebs. Slick with visceral fluid, leaves and petals cling to the man’s bird-boned wrists. His face, haloed by damp curls and crowned...
"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 3
deathsuicideviolence
"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
"An excerpt from the unfinished memoirs of Sullivan Kingsley. Text was dictated to and recorded by a Kvasir Scrivener™. Any poetic editorializing can be assumed in accordance with the spirit of Mr. Kingsley’s intentions, as interpreted by a conjured...
Content warnings 3
deathgoresexual-content
"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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death
"The women of Dejima Island could never pinpoint when their dreams began to change, but they knew it had something to do with the tradesmen’s tales. The foreigners who arrived at the docks were hard men, chiseled by salt and wind and all the horrors of two...
"I am running out of Words. I stumble down the temple steps, clutching my wounded side. I had been too slow to use my fourth Word and the prison guard’s spear had drawn blood before he choked to death under the weight of my suffocation spell."
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"The low rumble of the train cut through the night and the living flesh of The City, carrying its passengers ever further from the gleam of parliaments and providence. The stop towards Wild Park grew ever closer, represented along the wall of the train by...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
"When Ariana sent word to her birth mother, Scarlett, that they needed to speak, she didn’t really expect a response. Scarlett had abandoned her with her father as a barely weaned infant and only returned when Ariana was twenty. In the few years since,...
Content warnings 1
violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathracismviolence
"The forest whispers of my sister’s arrival long before I sense her. Birds flutter between pink-girdled maehwa trees, mocking her voice in the tongue only shamans understand. Seonbyeon, Seonbyeon, they repeat mindlessly, and this is how I know my sister is...
"Konstantinov’s Company found the hostages just a few hours after setting out on the trail of the True raiders who’d taken them. Leaving behind the tar sands mine, its extraction plant, and the smoldering ruin of its tank farm, the fresh graves and...
Content warnings 2
goreviolence
"Who loves you?” I ask. My daughter looks away. Doesn’t answer. I lean down and turn her to face me, resting my thumb in the dimple in her chin. It’s the same dimple her mother has. Or had. “You love me, Daddy.” “That’s right, so please listen closely,” I...
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeathviolence
"Terse heard the disturbance in the woods long before the short, sturdy girl shoved through the overgrown hedge. He flung open the door of his workshop, and she startled, nearly dropping a large knapsack dangling off of one shoulder. “Can I help you?”...
Content warnings 1
violence
"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
"Back when I was a kitten, existing inside a hypothetical box a scientist had trapped me in, one where I might be dead or alive, from here or there, pansexual or not, I was definitely a fan of The Guest Cat, an audiobook that the young scientist, Soni,...
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorchild-abuse
"The beheaded tilapia nudged teasingly against the riverbank in a bloody soup, staining the lush weeds beneath the little girl’s feet. Oblivious to the stench, she squatted beside the muddy water, her gaze tracking over the dead fish. There were a dozen of...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
"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
"It is part of my process to be both places at once, so that while I am sitting on the stool at your bedside with my segmented fingers plugged into your cerebrum, I am also inside your first memory of walking. In the undamaged parts of your braincase lay...
Content warnings 3
abuseracismviolence
"She tells the children to call her Kade Makasi, and if this was one of her stories, she’d describe herself as bent and wrinkled and spider-like for a touch of myth and poetry … but she’s none of these things … she’s tall, thick-browed, with two braided...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
"It forced itself to take that last step onto the ferry. Every step further from land felt like falling. Through space, through time, through every place it had ever been. It kept its eyes open, its features arranged in what it hoped was a neutral...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
racism
"Almost everyone has, at some point in their lives, encountered a door that was not there before. A little girl sits up in bed, staring at the two identical closets in her bedroom. She feels certain there had been only one when she fell asleep. A salaryman...
Content warnings 2
cannibalismviolence
"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
"There’s reasons not to go sit by the banks of the Dequindre. The mosquitoes bite something fierce this time of year, for one. May through September the air is thick with them. The river swells wide on its way through Wyandott."
"The chrysanthemums are dying. The yellow flowers face downward, stems wilting at the neck. Their petals curl and brown at the edges like burning paper. You lift one of the ragged blossoms up, as if to try and help it support its own weight. You keep the...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"The angel Azrael rode the dead horse across the empty lifeless land for what seemed like an eternity, not encountering another living soul until he crossed paths with a mutilated preacher, who erupted from the a great rent in the earth as though Hell...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
"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
"Nogorod is built of black rock and dull iron and pale ivory, a city of high towers rising like petrified trees beside the rough grey seas. The common folk are whale-fishers, hunting with harpoons from their ships, but the nobles are all wizards, and they...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"He had been on the run for a long time. At first, he drove himself ever forward, going deeper into the forest, aware of nothing but the need to keep moving. Much later, he realized that he had somehow circled back, returning to the places that he had...
Content warnings 2
animal-harmviolence
"The aftermath of the great war deposited me on a breathtaking port city called Aeskir, on a dazzling world called Aevii. This was about as fine a place to end up as I could have hoped. Many thousands of worlds across human space had been scoured of life...
Content warnings 2
genocideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-abusechild-death
"That dying anchor said some mysterious ‘he’ was looking for her. Chakatie tried to think of who that could be. When she’d been an anchor in charge of her own land, she’d thought she’d been even-handed. But traveling with the day-fellows had revealed to...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"Ambassador Porleth Heng considered herself a blessed woman. Unlike most members of the Confederate Diplomatic Corps, who had indentured themselves to that service out of economic hardship or an ache to escape the terrible conditions on their respective...
Content warnings 2
deathsubstance-use
"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
"In the folds of banyan trees, between the treeish world and ours, are markets. Real markets, not the pale human sort that happen every week, as if things that are worth buying happen every week. A banyan market occurs one day a year, which is as often as...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
animal-harmbody-horrorviolence
"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
"I am not an illness. I’m a soul with a goal. Everyone on this floor is here for intrusive thoughts, ideations, risk of harm to themselves or others. What society used to call possession, they now call neurotransmitter imbalance or schizophrenia or...
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusesuicide
A reporter travels to the Norwegian Arctic to cover an unusual sled race with the undead leading the living into unknown territory.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
The Hero journeys across the desert to capture The Thief Of Memory and retrieve her stolen memories. What she finds in the end may destroy her.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"It’s a pretty near thing, Nicolette. A pretty near thing.” Cédric mumbled to a bare skull in an alcove, the half-dead candle encrusting its forehead giving off barely enough light to fill the corner of the old storeroom. The skull was not Nicolette’s;...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Eli is—one hundred percent, without a doubt—vampiro, but he's missing all the stereotypical traits. Is there room for him to exist in a world where everyone has already decided who and what he is? Copyright khōréō magazine 2021. Story by K. Victoria...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseracismviolence
"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
"The blade of Legrue’s scalpel flared in his headlamp’s narrow beam, casting glints of light across the slender hand strapped to his cutting table. “Deed done?” the woman asked, a warble in her voice. Legrue adjusted his magnifiers. He had not eaten in...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath
"The ghosts the hollow-eyed girl in Junction Square was selling billowed from her basket in wispy ribbons, whipping and fluttering in wind I could not feel, their tantalizing snap and shudder of cloth lighter than air, heavier than sorrow. I saw her from...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusesexual-contenttransphobia
Nine years after the ace John “The Candle” Montaño first wielded his fire powers as a teenager on the reality TV show “American Hero”, he’s landed a job as the lead investigator for a prestigious arts insurer. His latest assignment, providing security for...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
A group of five friends rent a cabin in the woods—the next day only four are alive. What happened and why is something the survivors are desperate to unravel.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorself-harmviolence
"It was an inauspicious beginning to my mission to find the deathmage and bring her to the capital. I found her exactly where the Mandate said I would: at a tavern table, in one of the northern work camps, wasted drunk. Her long black curls, laced with...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"As the vehicle tumbled past him, Bashim saw the passenger’s grinning white teeth in a face masked by desert dust and violet Worldshapers. The tailpipes coughed fire, so close Bashim could feel their alcohol heat. The sheared-off wheel bounced past, a...
"Ankuin knew she was in a sim by the mineral taste in her mouth. The other tells were more subtle: the fractal pattern of moss on the cave wall, the cyclical rhythm of the rain on wet fronds, and the lyrical birdsong piercing through the dense forest. Most...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
ableismabuseviolence
"I have heard it on the rumors that when the tale-spinner’s guild gathers in their secret places, a full half of them are sworn to never tell the truth, and the other half to never tell a lie, even if it mean their life. Being one of that trade myself, I...
Content warnings 1
violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-deathgoresuicide
"The notion of the quantum mirror was first floated by two graduate students (Sapna Gupta and Mark Shaw) over a fourth round of beers in a small pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and therefore one should consider the role of intoxication in its initial...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
Deff and his team hunt the countryside for illegal Heroes, whom they kill and then sell the body parts. Something truly terrible happened with these “Heroes” in the recent past, and it’s not entirely done.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
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
When Lady Mary marries the mysterious Mr. Fox, a jealous suitor follows them to their castle.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathgore
European invaders with near-modern technology conquered a Mexico where the magic really worked, but the natives are preparing a rebellion.
Content warnings 3
genocidegoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
In the ruins of the American Midwest, two countries struggle over the question of whether brain uploads are still the same person, and a secret agent finds his loyalties have changed.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
On an agricultural planet, on the night they celebrate the harvest, a young man plans a secret rendezvous with his forbidden lover.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
The village people suffer from the Duke’s construction of the big tower, and even thought the villagers disapprove of her, old Gert can’t help doing things for the little children who come to her for aid.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneracism
Cortez invades a Mexico that has electricity, and he gets help from an unhappy slave girl.
Content warnings 3
deathslaveryviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Someone from our era look back to 1888 London and the Jack-the-Ripper murders.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorchild-abuse
The thirteen masters of the Academy meet to hear a mediocre student apply for the highest degree based on his claim that he can raise the dead.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
A grieving father tries to recreate the son he lost.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
In a future where successful people spend most of their time in cyberspace, Martha struggles to make ends meet servicing the systems that take care of them.
Content warnings 1
death
A couple of children are lost on the dangerous Barren Isle, which still has the original flora and fauna of Coyote. The search and rescue team will have their hands full.
Content warnings 2
child-abuseviolence
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathgore
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-deathsexual-violenceviolence
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
misogynysexual-violenceviolence
Thread, Rina, and Aakash have a mission to capture and kill a girl who has illegally acquired magic. Thread has second thoughts though.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
As a prostitute in Liverpool in 1763, Lolly has a hard life. She steals from a well-dressed corpse she finds in the river, with unexpected results.
Content warnings 3
child-deathsexual-contentviolence
In midwinter, just after midnight, the narrator hitches a ride with a strange woman as cold as the night itself.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
Teenage Brit enjoys teaching little kids at a Seattle Experience Outreach camp, even though she senses that something evil haunts the abandoned bunkers up the hill.
Content warnings 1
suicide
Cloe is a black android built to let white people act out their aggressions.
Content warnings 3
racismsexual-violenceviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-abusesuicideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
There's a quiet war in Boulder between hikers and cyclists, but whatever ripped two hikers' throats out must have been the cyclist from Hell.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
goreracismviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
"Michael sips his coffee, watching the screen automatically cycle through vidfeeds coming in from across the country, lingering just long enough to hit the relevant button. He knows the dominionist rhetoric, had heard it in the media, read it when he...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Valentini doesn’t flinch when the purple-bellied storm shakes the house, heedless of the film being shot within its derelict husk. Scene fifteen, take three. The Hollow Places crew rushes to stop the windows’ skeletal rattling before the atmospheric...
Content warnings 3
child-deathgoreself-harm
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
goretransphobiaviolence
"Children don’t generally assume their father will abandon them to die in the snow. But under certain circumstances, they might get an inkling. If their mother had died the year before, and their father brought home a woman with a sweet voice and cruel...
Content warnings 3
cannibalismchild-deathsexual-content
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"The angel Azrael rode the dead horse across the broken land under the light of a half moon until he came across a graveyard that seemed to have no end. Wooden crosses stretched away to the horizon, more than he could count. Many of the crosses were bent...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"Kuyom stood at Death’s door, shuffling from one foot to the other. She patted her head impatiently. She had gotten rid of the lice a week ago, but she still felt the phantom itch. They’d crawled into her hair while she was sleeping under a mango tree in...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathsuicide
"Gravel crunched as the mobile morgue drove itself away from the prison loading dock. Spotting the vehicle, the facility supervisor began to jog toward the gatehouse. Shoes slapping, he struggled to keep his shirt tucked in as he crossed the outer parking...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmchild-deathviolence
"I remember the night I became a ghost. My husband, the Emperor, served the tainted tea himself; my punishment for giving him yet another girl-child. I was not the first Empress to drink from this cup. My newborn daughter lay on my bed, wailing. The...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
goresexual-contentviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abuseviolencewar
"The ferryman’d had a poor, cold day, is how it starts. There’s other ways to start this one, but this time, we’ll start with the ferryman. It was shadows-eve, the coldest, longest night of the year, when the blackbird breathes all over the world. He’d...
Content warnings 3
child-deathracismviolence
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusemisogynyviolence
"Right,” I said. “Well, it’s a letter to the parents of the girl I love with all my heart and soul, telling them how I’ve just watched their daughter being dragged away screaming by soldiers and loaded on a ship to be taken as a sacrifice to the Black...
Content warnings 1
violence
"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
"At least when I tell the fucking machine I don’t want pickles, it remembers that I don’t want pickles. Now, what goes on behind the counter is another story. They hire people who can barely read. But at least I’m trusting my order to something...
Don Jacinto flees when he gets a letter from his crazy brother, not wanting to get involved in his quest to wake a supposed sleeping god.
Content warnings 3
goreviolencewar
Two little children come to a gingerbread house in the woods. The lady of the house is a witch, but so are the kids, and one of them is already dead anyway. The real problem is the people looking for them.
Content warnings 3
child-abusechild-deathgore
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
racism
"Really, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Shamans drag away poor farm girls from the outlying provinces all the time (particularly in seasons of great calamity, as everyone insists we are in now). Even then their lives stray little from their...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Red Riding Hood escapes the wolf after years of living together and finds asylum with Beauty while the Beast is overseas on business.
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
Young Mira has a gift: gemstones sing to her. She wants to use it to help her family, so she leaps at the chance to join a young man who’s hunting for a long-lost ruby mine.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
violence
Nata’s one of the best smugglers, in space and because of the war, she’s in great demand. This latest deal, though, pays so well for so little work there’s got to be something fishy about it.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
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
Pan Bao, his daughter Jing, and their snake-devil friend, Mei Li, encounter a ghost who needs help. They usually expect to be paid for their sorcery, but the ghost is very persistent.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
Tamalat has come to a priest to find out how to restore her friend Brio's shadow, in the hopes it will restore him to what he once was.
Content warnings 2
suicideviolence
You are a lonely ten-year-old boy living in an old house with your mom when a man claiming to be your uncle arrives and strange things start to happen.
Content warnings 2
abusesubstance-use
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
As famine hits southwestern Nigeria, a family is forced to battle not only hunger and disease, but an insistent curse. Content warnings: Death, non-graphic body horror Copyright © 2026 khōréō magazine. Story by Jesutomisin Emmanuel Ipinmoye, edited by...
Content warnings 3
abusecannibalismillness-and-pandemic
The sorcerer needs an heir. Not of her own flesh and blood, but sired—as she was—by one of the jungle's spirit-walking tigers and imbued with their primal magic. All of paradise is hers to offer, so what is she to do when the tiger refuses her deal?...
Content warnings 3
abusegoreviolence
A couple living on the mountain near a war zone adopt a herd of displaced sheep. Content warnings: Implied genocide, animal death, body horror, cannibalism Copyright © 2026 khōréō magazine. Story by Lisobel Tang, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio...
Content warnings 2
cannibalismgenocide
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
Ending 1 The world decays. It is your fault. Ending 2 The world decays. It is only somewhat your fault. Ending 3 Do I need to say it? Are you beginning to understand? Ending 4 Clearly not. Ending 5 You cannot save him. Every time you try it only...
Content warnings 3
deathself-harmviolence
This episode features "A Life Measured in Seconds" written by Anne Wilkins. Published in the June 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/wilkins_06_26...
Content warnings 2
abusebody-horror
When I worked at Disneyland in the summer of ’65, it was strange enough even without what I found in the dumpster. This was the sixties, and the Magic Kingdom, no matter how many long-haired hippies it denied admission to, couldn’t escape the decade.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
The engines echo across the emptiness of the plain like a chorale, individual melodies weaving together to create a tune in the voiceless air. We hear them miles away, aeons in the distance, giving us time to prepare for their arrival. By the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
They said afterward that the first fishermen who’d gone down to the beach that morning had found her, but when the people from the village hurried to see what the tide had carried in, no one claimed to be the person who’d discovered her. It was as if the...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorsexual-content
I took the rats with me when Ilona kicked me out because I knew she loved them. She’d hold them, caressing their pink tails as she fed them pierogi, their large front teeth scraping against the pads of her fingers. Anton was her favorite, a big black rat...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsubstance-useviolence
There once lived a boy who paid for a fortune. Nassim wore carob hair and eyes severe like cardamom. He spent his days scouring the souk for unique trinkets he liked to collect or counting the uneven stones of Jerusalem’s cobbled streets as he passed...
Content warnings 3
sexual-violenceviolencewar
Given Rebecca’s hunger for blood, our hopes being complimentary seemed unlikely, yet Auntie Regina’s blessing poured over us both from head to toe. Never before had I felt closer to my sister. The warmth penetrated deeper into our skin, past the second...
Content warnings 2
animal-harmbody-horror
This episode features "Crosstalk, Elysium" written by Carolyn Zhao. Published in the March 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/zhao_03_26 Support us on...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
When D0G hears the scream and streaks ahead down the leaf-strewn road through the fall-bright birch and beech and maple, I remember what my sister Taylor used to say: there […]
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
This episode features "D0G" written by Tania Fordwalker. 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/fordwalker_04_26 Support us on...
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
Content note (click for details) Depictions of illness and vomiting, religious themes edited by Amanda Helms Sara collapsed into the folding chair in the rhomboid of shade by the camper pod, stared out at Terga’s vast red plains and tried to remember the...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
Content note (click for details) Implied sexual assault of a teen, death of an animal edited by Hal Y. Zhang I toss the keys on the green Formica counter. I always aim for the same spot: that ugly, little brown ring—bubbled up and cracking—where Bill had...
Content warnings 3
abuseanimal-harmchild-abuse
Content note (click for details) This story contains references to mass atrocities. edited by Amanda Helms Dourglamis. The largest castle I’d seen in the flesh. Barreling towards me, it was also clearly the fastest. Great granite legs churned beneath its...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorcannibalism
Content note (click for details) Animal cruelty. edited by David Steffen Do not scream, my friend. Hold it back. Good—I know it hurts, trust me I do, but this is one of the most important things you will ever do in your life. Hold fast, now. Keep your...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
edited by Ziv Wities Content note (click for details) Body horror; extended description of assisted suicide with dubious consent The attractive blonde technician responsible for your death smiles lovingly, and a smooth plastic pen slides into your gnarled...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathsexual-content
Content note (click for details) Sexual assault, child abuse, violence, abduction, death, blood, racism, colonization edited by Hal Y. Zhang ***RAW TRANSCRIPT, FIRST PASS EDIT NOTES*** Njiran Folk Beliefs VOLUME II Collected by Ven Nakai, retired Njiran...
Content warnings 3
racismsexual-violenceviolence
Layla was bleeding out. Her neurons began to supernova and transmute into a new electrical form. A maglev of old memories zipped past her. She was thinking about that one […]
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
This episode features "Decimation Circles" written by Raahem Alvi. 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/alvi_05_26 Support us on...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
The airship’s spotlights played off the vast rocky sides of the shaft that plunged deep into the Earth’s core through the lithosphere and eventually to our destination: the Center of the Earth! I yawned. We fell so slowly, the sides of the shaft several...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Personality Disorder (Not Otherwise Specified) My patients called me Dr. Holloway. My friends called me Jason. I won’t tell you what my three ex-wives called me but I’m sure you can guess. I was a psychiatrist (and a damn good one seventy percent of the...
Content warnings 3
mental-illnesssubstance-usesuicide
He had a second life, one spent in the river in laughter and play.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “What Any Dead Thing Wants” originally appeared in Psychopomp (February 2024) Copious helpings of harsh language descriptors found here. What Any Dead Thing...
Content warnings 1
violence
Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Copious helpings of harsh language descriptors found here. Don’t miss Part 1: Escape Pod 1026: What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 1 of 3) What Any Dead Thing...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgore
Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Copious helpings of harsh language descriptors found here. Don’t miss Parts 1 and 2: Escape Pod 1026: What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 1 of 3), Escape Pod...
Content warnings 1
death
Author : Myna Chang Narrator : Amanda Ching Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Graduated Justice originally appeared in Translunar Travelers Lounge, February 2025. Graduated Justice: An Amelia Li Mystery By Myna Chang I was leaning against...
Content warnings 1
death
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
Author : Sylvie Althoff Narrator : Jess Lewis Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1050: Freebooter is an Escape Pod original. Moderate use of harsh language. This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get...
Content warnings 1
violence
I had a daughter and then I didn’t. I woke in the cradle of midnight, shivering from a supernatural cold. I thought at first that she was crying, that she had woken me, like so many midnights before. But there was silence all around me. I sat up on one arm...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
Debut day isn’t easy for anyone, even a god. Newly minted, coin-bright, the god called Hark waits backstage. He’s about to go out to perform his first miracle, and he can hear his fans murmuring in front of the altar. They don’t know they’re the lucky ones...
Content warnings 2
child-abusesuicide
Vacule Grievouss, as anyone would suspect, wasn’t bequeathed much in the way of opportunities by his parents. He was the child of two stack zappers operating out of the newly […]
Content warnings 2
child-abuseslavery
This episode features "Feed Them on Your Dreams" written by E.N. Auslender. Published in the August 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/auslender_08_26...
Content warnings 2
abuseslavery
Qopa was once a world of marshes. Visitors hear this often, in tones that range from apologetic to bitter, wistful to matter-of-fact—especially when they are shown the vast clay pan […]
Content warnings 3
goreviolencewar
This episode features "Fistful of Antimatter" written by Rich Larson. Published in the September 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/larson_09_26...
Content warnings 3
goreviolencewar
Wine breathes, down here in the dark. It breathes, it ages. It is a living thing, the same as us. Inside each bottle is an ecosystem: a dark sea that […]
Content warnings 1
cannibalism
—for Rory Cooney It’s July 23, 4:17 p.m., and I’m box-breathing like my life depends on it. My forehead is pressed against the door of the meeting room of the […]
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
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
It took Corey Liao seven days to wrench herself free from her body. The skeins of fascia and sinew lashing soul to body had been stubborn. She’d painstakingly scraped herself free, thread by thread, while silt enveloped her limbs and clouded her eyes and...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
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
The guillotine was conceived as swifter, painless, more humane. You touch your throat. You wonder.
Content warnings 3
self-harmsexual-contentsuicide
My wife sometimes asked what had gone wrong with us. She had always been our bank of compassion, the caretaker of our marriage, the one who diagnosed what was needed to keep us on track, and made sure that it was provided. I evaded the question. How could...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
In Sunnyhaven, we were all equally unique—and we’d been that way for years, the morning the New Girl arrived. Now, any of us would’ve admitted it: Sunnyhaven wasn’t perfect. There were no public parks or pools, no families walking their dogs down ash-lined...
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ableismchild-abuseviolence
Amelia’s favorite time of day is before dawn, when all the beauty is hidden by shadow. She rises from her bed every morning, shivering in the hushed air, and gets dressed in the dark. Sometimes she has to redo the buttons, but she doesn’t turn on the light...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
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...
My mom was sixteen when a band of boys took her out to the woods and bound her to a tree and tortured her to death, like in Jennifer’s Body , so you see her womb was kinda already out of commish by the time she got around to wanting to have me. A year ago,...
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cannibalismsexual-violenceviolence
Feast #1 We stare at Judar of the Island, stunned, as he picks up a piece of roasted chicken and bites into the place where thigh meets leg, the marinade smearing the corners of his mouth. His teeth sink into the flesh again, then again, then again, until...
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body-horrordeathviolence
(Editorial Note: Starting with this month’s story, we will only post ebooks in the EPUB format as Amazon phased out the MOBI format a few years ago. Also, moving forward, we will be tagging our stories. We plan to tag our backlog of stories over the next...
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body-horrorgoreviolence
Content note: suicidal ideation I am a star, falling. “Awake now?” My eyes open to words as an unknown face greets me, small with a curious gaze. She parts full lips to bare teeth and I tense. A threat? No. A smile. I stare back. “I didn’t think you’d...
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slaverysuicidewar
He called her Legs. “Legs for days,” he’d say, his voice thick with wonder. When he spoke to her, she was filled with a warm, heady feeling that made her purr and rub against him. She had to be careful when she did, because she was still growing into her...
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abuseanimal-harmviolence
“Always just. Always magical.” When the four of us first started working as Magical Girls, we penned the slogan in a McDonalds, giggling about how corny it sounded. Annie joked about how we’d still be calling ourselves magical girls when we were eighty,...
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deathgoreviolence
I’m only doing maskwork until I find better, but there aren’t many physical jobs to go around in Schrödinger City. Most get done by gleaming machines, by hop-along bots and drone swarms. Luckily, maskwork needs a human touch—and supposedly, village folk...
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suicide
You are: A disillusioned mathematical physicist with a wet open mind. Desperate for knowledge. A neo-masochist. A willing sacrifice.
My foot is hidden under a pile of fallen leaves in a ditch near the highway. My hand, a mile or so away, buried under a shallow layer of dirt in what will be someone’s tulip bed next spring. My head—I don’t know where it is. Strange. Surely it’s what I’m...
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body-horrordeathviolence
The other animals in my territory keep disappearing; it’s perfect. The yard is safer without the cats, so I’m free to search the bushes for unwanted guests while I consider […]
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body-horrorgoreviolence
This episode features "Nesting Behavior of Imported Species Troglodytes aedon on Planet Americearth" written by R.L. Meza. Published in the July 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
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body-horrorgoreviolence
The videos show people kissing. They press their mouths together and open their lips. Their tongues move, wet and intrusive, less like they are tasting each other than like they want to lay eggs in the protected throats of their lovers.
When I was eight years old, two things happened to me: I realized I wanted to hurt my cousin, and in that same moment God or the Devil or some other force in the universe kicked my consciousness out of my human body and into a fly that circled and alighted...
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deathgoreviolence
“God” is not the word I’d use. But it is the only one that suffices. There are all kinds of gods: the old and the new; the useful, the useless; the capricious and the dependable; the wrathful and the meek. They all had one thing in common—whether they were...
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sexual-content
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 […]
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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...
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deathgoresexual-content
The fridge asks every morning, without fail, why it is empty, because it cares the most about my consumption.
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deathsuicideviolence
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...
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body-horrormental-illnesspregnancy-loss
Author : C. T. Muchemwa Narrator : Munashe R. Goromonzi Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie Previously published by FIYAH 33 (February 2025) Content note for gore Rated PG-13 The Inheritance by C. T. Muchemwa Taona did not shed a single tear...
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deathgoreviolence
Author : Victor Forna Narrators : Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Munashe R. Goromonzi, Wanini Kimemiah, Tahnia Barrie, Soila Kenya and Opie Ogundiran Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Previously published by Apex Magazine Rated PG Kɛrozin Lamp Kurfi...
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violence
Author : Anne Ivy Narrator : Elizabeth Green Host : Alicia Caporaso Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie Previously ran as episode 292 and first published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Read the full text here! Rated R Read the full text here! The post PodCastle...
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goresexual-contentviolence
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...
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body-horrorsuicidewar
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 TWO of Two by André Geleynse...
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body-horrorsuicidewar
Author : T. R. Steele Narrator : Jordan Kurella Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 943: At Death’s Door is a PodCastle original. content notes for suicidal ideation and second-person narration Rated PG-13 At Death’s Door by T. R....
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssuicide
Author : Merc Fenn Wolfmoor Narrator : Sandra Espinoza Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Previously published in Apex Magazine (2021) Rated PG-13 Gray Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor A girl has lost her soul...
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body-horrorgoreviolence
Author : Charlotte Ashley Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Ziv Wities Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie Previously ran as episode 517 and first published in Fantasy & Science Fiction. Rated PG-13 A Fine Balance By Charlotte Ashley My mistress, Shoanna Yildirim,...
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deathgoreviolence
Author : Chaitanya Murali Narrator : Kaushik Narasimhan Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Previously published by Kaleidotrope, 2024 Contents Notes for colonisation, enslavement, torture, racism, and references to sexual assault Rated R Of...
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racismslaveryviolence
Author : Chaitanya Murali Narrator : Kaushik Narasimhan Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Previously published by Kaleidotrope, 2024 Contents Notes for colonisation, enslavement, torture, racism, and references to sexual assault Rated R Of...
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goreslaveryviolence
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
“A Rose For Emily” was first published in The Forum, April 30, 1930 C/W for racial slurs [n-word], mental illness, misogyny, homophobia and Spoiler poisoning [collapse] I When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a...
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mental-illnessmisogynyracism
“Tailpiece” first appeared in More Ruthless Rhymes, 1930, and “The Second Awakening of a Magician” first appeared in The London Mercury, November 1930 C/W: fire My son Augustus, in the street, one day, Was feeling quite exceptionally merry. A stranger...
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deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
“The Book” was first published in 1930 in The London Mercury and later collected in The Weird (Tor Books, 2012) CW: harm to child/animal, reference to suicide On a foggy night in November, Mr. Corbett, having guessed the murderer by the third chapter of...
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animal-harmchild-abusesuicide
“The End Of The Story” was originally published in Weird Tales, vol. 15, no. 5 (May 1930). Link: Weird Tales original text Original layout from Weird Tales The Emperor of Dreams documentary Best collection of Smith’s poetry The following narrative was...
‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ was first published in Hearst’s International Combined with Cosmopolitan, April 1930. C/W strong violence, racist language Here’s a link to the Archive.org of the original text:...
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deathracismviolence
PseudoPod 1015: What Haunts the Newbuild? is a PseudoPod original. When the Night Comes Out If the dead who loved her haunt an old home’s bones, what haunts the newbuild? What makes her creak and moan? Every house is a violence—and a weathered house knows...
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animal-harmdeathpregnancy-loss
“Left by the Tide” first appeared in Weird Tales, March 1929 “Sirens Chasing Sirens” first appeared in The Gateway Review back in 2018 “Dread and Faith” was originally published in February 2025 in Blood Lust from Black Hare Press Far from the frenzy Of...
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goresexual-contentviolence
PseudoPod 1017: In the Hands of a Different God is a PseudoPod original. C/W for body horror, child abuse/neglect, implied homophobia Jim Kristofic novels Coyote Stranger The Sundown Killers Why Miitaries Must Destroy Cities To Save Them (Add your own air...
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body-horrorchild-abusehomophobia
‘The Polyamorous Heart of Death’ first appeared in the anthology And One Day We Will Die: Strange Stories Inspired by the Music of Neutral Milk Hotel CW: 2nd person PoV, transphobia, implied necrophilia The Neutral Milk Hotel The music track that inspired...
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body-horrorsexual-contenttransphobia
‘Superstition’ was first published in the anthology 120 Murders: Dark Fiction Inspired by the Alternative Era Remote Viewing Clerks 1 Donnie Darko The Destructors Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand by Primitive Radio Gods The...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
PseudoPod 1023: Grandifolia is a PseudoPod original. C/W: Emotional control, intimate partner abuse The first time I do everything the way I’m supposed to. I wait for the new moon and walk into the woods at midnight. I carry a jar of pig’s blood and wear a...
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abusebody-horrorsexual-content
“Witchcraft” was first printed in Ornaments in Jade, 1924 “How I Turned My Little Brother Human” was first published in Shaky Pictures of Vanished Faces, edited by Eric Raglin, in September 2025 “Visit Seahaven” was first published in Factor Four magazine...
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child-deathpregnancy-losssubstance-use
PseudoPod 1025: Impostor Syndrome is a PseudoPod original. The Mighty Boosh-Back to the Crunch Looking back, the first red flag was during the job interview, when Chad said their target demographic was males, ages thirteen to seventeen. “That’s pretty...
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deathgoreviolence
PseudoPod 1026: Thoughts and Prayers is a PseudoPod original. C/W: Gun violence, school shooting https://www.npr.org/2025/09/08/nx-s1-5317647/school-shooting-industry https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-shootings-database/...
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deathgoreviolence
“All The Eyes That See” was originally published in Cosmic Horror Monthly issue #42 (ed. Charles Tyra, December 2023); it also won the 2023 Australian Shadows Award for Short Fiction. C/W: child abuse, domestic abuse From the author: “This story is me once...
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abusebody-horrorchild-abuse
PseudoPod 1029: Feeding the Choke-Tree is a PseudoPod original. Okja “Straws,” I said. “Why straws?” “Because they’re cute, obviously,” said Foreman. “Don’t you think?” I squinted at them. Nearly a dozen were inching around his feet. As I watched, one...
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body-horrordeathgore
PseudoPod 1030: Keeping Up With the Conan Doyles is a PseudoPod original. C/W: disordered eating, fat-shaming May 22nd is Conan Doyle’s birthday and Sherlock Holmes Day Jess Whitecroft’s Patreon Cautionary Tales: Photographing Fairies From the Journals of...
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body-horrordeathmisogyny
“Her Skin” first appeared in the anthology, They Walk Among Us: A Collection of Utah Horror (42 Books, April 2020). C/W: intimate partner abuse/control Notes contain possible spoilers: see Host Commentary below He found her in Hells Canyon. After that, my...
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abusebody-horrordeath
PseudoPod 1032: Flash on the Borderlands LXXVIII (78): Terraeque urbesque recedant is a PseudoPod original. C/W: racism, xenophobia, road death From the author: “Othertongue” began as a pastiche of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space,” provoked by...
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body-horrordeathracism
“Devil Is Fine” was first published in Cosmic Horror Monthly, in January 2025 C/W: strong body horror, gun violence, animal harm Author notes: “I was still pretty drunk on the experience of playing Red Dead Redemption 2 when I wrote this story and wanted...
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animal-harmbody-horrorviolence
PseudoPod 1034: Only In The Dark is a PseudoPod original. The crackling sound of static fills the room as the screen lights up. We see a simple landscape with some rocks and trees. The outline of a bird appears, its wings flapping softly. The bird takes...
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body-horror
“Interstate Mohinis” was originally published in Diabolical Plots (June 2023) C/W: sexual violence, cannibalism, reference to drug abuse In the way of Death runs the Vaitarani river. We are flayed open to its woe. We are always aware of its currents in...
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cannibalismsexual-violenceviolence
“Playing Tricks” was first published in It Was All A Dream: An Anthology Of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right, edited by Brandon Applegate, and later in Angela Sylvaine’s collection, The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls C/W: mental illness, gaslighting, child...
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abusechild-abusemental-illness
PseudoPod 1038: Red Ripper is a PseudoPod original. C/W reference to alcohol and drug abuse Listen, I could still stretch half you pups if I felt like it. Sit down and learn something about the business. Did I ever tell you about the Red Ripper? I got a...
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body-horrordeathsubstance-use
PseudoPod 1040: Flash on the Borderlands LXXIX (79): Ubi amor, ibi dolor is a PseudoPod original. For CWs, please see show notes below Content warnings with timings: 03:56–16:40 ‘A Table Set And Waiting’: graphic sexual content, body horror, homophobia...
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body-horrorhomophobiasexual-content
PseudoPod 1041: Graves Basin is a PseudoPod original. From the author: “I’ve heard many times, from people wiser than me, that a horror writer fares best when they don’t waste their time trying to figure out what scares other people, but instead write...
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body-horrorgoreillness-and-pandemic
PseudoPod 1042: Jerry Got Bit – Part 1 is a PseudoPod original. C/W: implied child abuse, guns From the author: “One of the questions I’d always left for myself in previous stories in this setting was where Jerry the werewolf had come from. It was clear...
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deathviolence
PseudoPod 1043: Jerry Got Bit – Part 2 is a PseudoPod original. C/W: implied child abuse, guns From the author: “One of the questions I’d always left for myself in previous stories in this setting was where Jerry the werewolf had come from. It was clear...
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deathgoreviolence
“Turquoise Waters” was first published in Women of the Weird West, edited by KC Grifant, in 2026 C/W: guns, misogyny, strong violence Author’s note: “I lived in New Mexico for six years where I taught Navajo, Zuni, and Hobi students in the Four Corners...
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goremisogynyviolence
Annie's Heart is a Haunted House was first published in THE HIDEOUS BOOK OF HIDDEN HORRORS, edited by Doug Murano, and was later published in Todd Keisling’s Stoker-nominated collection, COLD, BLACK & INFINITE
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deathgoreviolence
PseudoPod 1047: Growing Life is a PseudoPod original. C/W: strong body horror, death of a parent Lucy didn’t immediately notice her dead Mama in the middle of the playground. She had been busy having fun for the first time since Mama’s funeral. Sprinting...
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body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onegore
PseudoPod 1048: The Work of Smith House is a PseudoPod original. C/W: Spoiler Warning cultural appropriation, reference to suicide, male on female violence [collapse] “The Work of Smith House” is a PseudoPod original The photos hardly did Smith House...
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goresuicideviolence
“An Inordinate Amount of Interest” was originally published in the Wilted Pages anthology in 2023 and reprinted in The Skull & Laurel in 2025 C/W: exploitation, violence, reference to misgendering, 2nd person PoV Green flows from your imagination onto the...
Content warnings 1
violence
PseudoPod 1050: This House of Hopes, This House of Bones is a PseudoPod original. C/W: domestic violence, murder My husband is home again. I cannot hear him well, not with the ringing in my ears and the throbbing headache making every movement agony, but...
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abusedeathviolence
“The Wishing Angel of Suffolk County” is a PseudoPod original “John Must Die” was first published in Flash Fiction Magazine on 9th February 2025 “Bird Bone” was originally published by Bag of Bones Press in 2022 “Woodsong” was first published in Flash...
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child-abusegoreviolence