By treaty, people on Erax never talk to the Oceanics, so when an Oceanic turns up at a south polar base to deliver a few dead human bodies, it’s trouble for sure.
Content warnings 3
genocidegoreviolence
Justice
100 free-to-read stories tagged “Justice”
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
Sometimes a unicorn assisted Judge Kao Yu, and because he was so just and honest, he never feared its judgment. Until now.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Police Sub-Inspector Ferron jerked her sandaled foot away from the floor with a muffled shriek, wishing she had worn boots, despite the weather. She balanced on the other leg and cradled her injured extremity in both hands. She was momentarily heedless of...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssuicide
"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
In a post-apocalypse US, Enid investigates a household that is reportedly hosting an unapproved pregnancy. Note: This story stands alone; it is not part 3 of anything.
Content warnings 1
abuse
"At five A.M., Joy got a call from the truck stop off the freeway east of the city. Wasn’t the first time. “Did it get dumped? Did it get loose from a truck?” Joy asked. “I don’t know,” the night manager answered. “But it’s digging around in the garbage...
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
"The rocket ship blasted off from the Devereaux Airstrip on the outskirts of Ottawa and headed straight into the stratosphere. Ruth Mulu, one of four passengers, stared at the cappuccino machine and tried not to throw up. Adeline Devereaux, the Canadian...
Content warnings 2
homophobiasexual-violence
"Did you know,” the Ijt Ambassador said, as she sipped gently at her soup with her long, blue, curling tongue, “that your predecessor, in an act of yofishi —” the translator choked on the word, but Station Commander Ennie Niagara knew that it meant...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-abusechild-deathsexual-violence
"On the morning of June 3rd, 2307, Galactic Standard, Mo cycled through her hundreds of sensors, checking that everything on the Eris Express was well. Her processors whirred as she calculated trajectories for the ship, which she always found calming. She...
"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
"Orli staggered out of the door of her suite, her workbag over her shoulder, her hands shaking. The back of her right shoe had crumpled under her heel after she’d slid her foot into the supposedly comfortable loafer (lies, all the claims about comfort here...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
"Loire Valley, 1520 Estienne’s shadow fell over me, and I could not, of a sudden, recall the stitch I was making. He had invited himself onto the ladies’ porch without announcement. Odette’s voice faltered. “Take—” She was reading from the Queen of...
Content warnings 2
misogynysexual-violence
"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.
"The golden woman is a prisoner trapped in a straight-backed chair. She has been paralyzed by artificial means, reduced to a temporary quadriplegic by a device affixed to the back of her neck. She has been stripped to her undergarments and left only enough...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
No vampire is ever innocent… The wandering Judge Dee serves as judge, jury, and executioner for any vampire who breaks the laws designed to safeguard their kind’s survival. This new case in particular puts his mandate to the test.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
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
"I had never been in a printing shop before, so it was a shame that my first sight of one was ruined by all the blood. When I went down to the main room of the palazzo that morning, I was not anticipating murder, and I was certainly not thinking about...
"The command center was silent but for the singing of the computers. No human voice dared speak as we passed into Saturn’s shadow. It was ridiculous and illogical, but superstition is a hard thing to train out of people who exist upon the knife’s edge of...
"I was shipped to Barsaylus like freight. The ship was unmanned or, more accurately, uncrewed. Unlit, even. The aliens had given us technical specifications to build a kind of pod for my own survival, and it had taken NASA about a year working around the...
Content warnings 2
genocideviolence
"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
"The funeral began when the temple clock tolled at sunset, crimson and lavender and gold clouds against a violet sky. Or an artificial version of nightfall—day changing to night on the video screens tiling the walls and ceiling of the giant cavern that...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"Dill.” Keith settled down next to her on the storage tub they used for a bench. “The plant was just big enough to trim.” “Ooo.” Blaine kissed him in the steam over her cup. “My man can COOK.” After two months on Mars trying to get anything to grow, after...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorracismviolence
In a world where the dinosaurs never died out, Rekek and his adopted son accept a commission to lead a paleontologist to fossil-rich sites in the black hills of what’s South Dakota in our world.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathracism
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
sexual-violence
A janitor wonders if he should trust an app answers questions no one could know the answers to. Especially when that app suggests someone may be about to stage a school shooting.
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssuicide
In which we learn how bad translations averted a war and led to lasting peace.
Content warnings 2
misogynywar
"Poland, 1979 Warm sun filtered through the leaves and dappled the sidewalk as Helena walked back from the farmers’ market. In May, the linden trees bloomed all over the city, the same cheerful green fringed with white as the year before, as if nothing had...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
"Sirius kho Delsi swam in the muddy water filling the abandoned conduit leading to Wisdom Lake, a tear-shaped pond enclosed inside the Imperial Preserve. Fingering the cracked walls in total darkness and bumping against gooey obstacles had taken longer...
"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
"Instead of indulging in the festivities, I spent the evening evading Lamprecht, while Herschel evaded me. I had come to Bath not just to soak my body in healing waters, but to bathe my mind in new thoughts, to browse with the great William Herschel at the...
"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
"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
"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
"Teodorq sunna Nagarajan the Ironhand sat astride his horse at the head of his regiment and studied the situation before him. His regiment, the Roy’s Own Savage Archers, was arrayed on the extreme left of the Royal and Imperial Army of Cuffland,...
Content warnings 1
war
"During the unbearable years of tyranny, the political prisoners of the Anchorite Hegemony made a solemn covenant: when the time came, they would cross the last miles to freedom on their feet. For reasons of youth and idiocy, Tishrel thought he would have...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"ASIMOV WAS A BIGOT.” The graffiti, sprayed across the bucket of a Soviet ore hopper car, one of a long train of them. Then a slash of Cyrillic, the same message probably, obscured by a crust of snow and mud and grit. Not clear from the lettering if it was...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Bob, one of the bat-like Zoeys on New Horizons, helped architect the peace treaty that ended the war with the humans, but some Zoeys who don’t want peace plan to use his son against him.
The story of how Aned Heast, having lost a leg and his entire army, reclaimed his honor in a drought-ridden town whose adults mysteriously vanished.
Content warnings 3
deathslaveryviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
After the asteroid destroys the Earth, Aleja escapes in a life pod good for one month, but surviving long enough to find a real colony isn’t going to be easy.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-deathsexual-violenceviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
goreracismviolence
"As much as Flash Kennedy loved to lose himself in code, he also loved the energy and buzz that came from being around people. So of course they made him the face of user testing. It only made sense, and he loved it besides. They’d already set the space...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
In time, the entire shift’s 138 Express inbound transfers are processed, and I’m free to service passengers from other lines. These transfers are unremarkable. These passengers aren’t refugees.
Congratulations on your Magic Sword"! For all inquiries as to its powers and perils, please consult the Virtue Exercises Manual". However, we know new users sometimes get in over their heads. That’s why messages like this may appear on your blade. If you...
Author : Carrie Vaughn Narrator : Cherrae L. Stuart Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Woolly” was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction (May/June 2025) This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off...
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
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...
Content warnings 1
suicide
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...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
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...
Content warnings 3
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...
Content warnings 3
goreslaveryviolence
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...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
Aunt Jackie had warned me to be careful with Trey, the highest ranked male alpaca in her flock. His magical wool is so soft, we tolerate his posturing bullshit. I took the necessary precautions, sending a well worn shirt a week before I would arrive to...
Content warnings 1
violence
This episode features "Three Cases from the Cosmic Psychiatric Clinic" written by Pan Haitian. Published in the June 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Elara moved through the settlement with a careful quiet that was almost second nature, the worn soles of her boots tracing familiar paths across the rippling surface of the Great Wanderer’s back. Evening light pooled in low hollows, settling into a dusk...
Deb is dead set on getting a pedicure, now, damn anyone else's time! But the Universe has its own plans, and she's not the only VIP to walk through the doors of SALON LA BELLE, eager to have her wish granted. Content warnings: Blood, violence, death,...
In an RPG game, a Black avatar repeatedly attempts to survive an encounter with the police. Content warnings: Violence, death, racism, hateful language, xenophobia Copyright khōréō magazine 2025. Story by KÁNYIN Olorunnisola, edited by Isabella Kestermann....
Content warnings 3
deathracismviolence
An imprisoned god is bound to the trees of an ancient swamp, until one day someone comes looking. Content warnings: Violence, body horror Copyright khōréō magazine 2025. Story by Natasha King, edited by Zhui Ning Chang. Audio edition read by Suzie Rai and...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Come one, come all! Witness the fall of a despot alongside the glorious rebirth of one heavenly beast in "RAIN FIRE CLOUD" by Caroline Hung. Copyright khōréō magazine 2024. Story by Caroline Hung , edited by Zhui Ning Chang. Audio edition read by Sam Yeow,...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Years after the terrifying dictator of a small island nation has been deposed, a native bartender tells his side of history to an unsuspecting tourist. Content warning: Mentions of death Copyright khōréō magazine 2024. Story by Desiree Winns, edited by...
Content warnings 3
deathslaveryviolence
Ni Darti is determined to curse Herman Willem Daendels, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, for the death of her son. But a shaman cannot curse someone he does not know—and so, Ni Darti embarks on a quest to learn what she can of the colonizer....
Content warnings 3
deathslaveryviolence
“Browdean Farm” originally appeared in the 1927 collection Some Ghost Stories Check out ll the amazing things W.J. Walton is working on at AWKWARD LABS (http://www.awkward-labs.com) ? Most people with limited vocabularies such as mine would describe the...
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
“Bones in It” was originally published in Lightspeed in May 2021 Good Bones by Maggie Smith 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...
Content warnings 3
goresexual-violenceviolence
“Them Doghead Boys” originally appeared in Current Affairs Magazine in their Jan/Feb 2021 issue Things got bad bad once the Ravels was gone. Five-Oh swooped down and arrested damnear eighty of them and after that wasn’t nobody on the corners slingin but...
Content warnings 3
goreracismviolence
PseudoPod 859: We, the Ones Who Raised Sam Gowers from the Dead is a PseudoPod original. CW: Homophobic/transphobic violence Yes, to answer your questions, we were the ones who did it; we were the ones who dabbled into the forbidden arts, who so casually...
Content warnings 3
homophobiatransphobiaviolence
“The Curious Story of Susan Styles” was originally published in 1893 The Society for Psychical Research was formed in 1882, 11 years before this story was written “Susan Styles,” the name is not a romantic one, and yet it is associated in my mind with a...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath
PseudoPod 873: A Box of Hair and Nail is a PseudoPod original. “This story was inspired by an urban myth that terrified my mum when she was a teenager in Malaysia. The legend went that if you didn’t dispose of your nail and hair clippings carefully, an...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
This text was extracted from McClure’s Jan 1911, illustrated by Henry Raleigh. The short story was adapted by herself into a novel in 1913; and again adapted into an opera and numerous films (including one by Alfred Hitchcock) and radio plays. “THERE he is...
Content warnings 3
deathsuicideviolence
“The Belsnickel” has previously appeared on the online platforms Vocal and Patreon. From the author: ”I loved the stories my German great-grandmother shared about belsnickels – friends and neighbors who dressed in big fur coats and frightful masks and went...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmchild-deathdeath
“It Takes Slow Sips” first appeared in the anthology Lost Contact and was reprinted in the 2023 collection The Inconsolables CW: Stalking, allusion to date rape From the author: “The word incel, which means “involuntary celibate,” is never used explicitly...
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrormisogyny
Adam has inherited his grandmother's restaurant, where they serve sins—often covertly and illegally purchased from a nearby prison. When a customer sends back a dish, Adam is faced with questions he's not sure he wants to answer. Copyright khōréō magazine...
Content warnings 3
racismsuicideviolence
"Hold it right there, gasbag.’ The red balloon turned. The beam of a searchlight from high above momentarily crisscrossed the dark alleyway, catching the smooth surface of his face and the scotch tape scar on the left. ‘… Oh, it’s you,’ he said. Three big...
Content warnings 3
deathsubstance-useviolence
“Sometimes Boys Don’t Know” was originally published in the July 2021 issue of Nightmare Magazine. “Human Body as Compendium” is a PseudoPod original. “Never Enough Pockets” is a PseudoPod original Never Enough Pockets: body horror, self-harm “Human Body...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorself-harmsexual-violence
PseudoPod 801: The Bear Across the Way is a PseudoPod original. I paid no more attention to the bear than I would have any new neighbors. Despite what my husband might tell you, the fact that he was a bear played into my curiosity very little. It was his...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmdeathviolence
PseudoPod 803: Them At Number Seventy-Four is a PseudoPod original. When body number four is discovered, Mrs Patterson thinks that surely now she and her husband will be caught. Days creep past, then a week. Two. Three. Their excitement and relief begins...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
“The Tentacle and You” was originally published in Nature Futures back in 2019. “Backers” is a PseudoPod Original “Your Honor, My Undead Client Opposes the Application to Probate His Estate” is a PseudoPod original. “Backers”: “My wife and her friends are...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
PseudoPod 810: Her Face All Teeth is a PseudoPod original. Denny did not want to spy on the confessional, but at the same time, he did. He wanted what he did not want, or he did not want to want what he wanted. As a Catholic, he should have been...
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeathviolence
“Tommy’s Field” was originally published in the anthology Georgia Gothic – The final line is a nod to the superstition against whistling in a graveyard lest ye summon the devil. From the author: “This story is loosely based on a real person, and when I...
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
Jasy never feared photographs... until she was torn from home and adopted by a 'perfect' family. "Golden Girl" by A.M Guay interrogates transracial adoption by way of Get Out & The Stepford Wives. Copyright khōréō magazine 2021. Story by A.M Guay, edited...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorracismviolence
"Our Bones Were the Mortar" by Anjali Patel A young woman tries to escape the family business of necromancy – only to realize that Manhattan is just as rife with spirits. An existential horror tackling America's history of slavery. Copyright khōréō...
Content warnings 2
deathslavery
“Cleaver, Meat, and Block” was originally published in Black Static #73 in January 2020. The first thing Hannah learned when she came to live with her grandparents after the Plague, was how to wield the meat cleaver. Grandma taught her, guiding her hands...
Content warnings 3
child-deathgoreviolence
“Death Has Red Hair” was originally published in Weird Tales in September of 1942. This story is surprising in being an early entry that is unabashedly feminist with multiple shades of “street harassment” on display. We three men were hugging the open fire...
Content warnings 3
deathmisogynyviolence
“Trowel, Brush, Bones” was originally published in the Iron Horse Literary Review in January 2021 Sites that help with and advocate for the safety for women: We arrive at the compound outside Huanca just after midnight. We are tired and hungry and altitude...
Content warnings 1
sexual-violence
“Feast for Small Pieces” was originally published in The Bronzeville Bee in 2019 and reprinted in the collection Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy. “MeeMee” first saw print in the anthology Georgia Gothic. “The Shimmer of Trees” was originally published...
Content warnings 3
goremisogynyviolence