467 free-to-read stories tagged “Melancholic”
The narrator is a witch who works in a public library somewhere in the rural American South. Her job is to get patrons the books they need, but a lonely teenage boy poses a challenge.
child-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onemental-illnesssuicide
Meimei dates really bad guys. Who want to use her. Who don't know what they're in for.
abusebody-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
Tabitha has been walking a long time, trying to wear out seven pairs of iron shoes; Amira has been sitting alone on a glass hill that suitors try to climb.
abuseviolence
Stella’s helping an old high-school friend clean out his dead brother’s house, but the brother was a hoarder, and the task is horrible in several ways.
death-of-a-loved-onemental-illness
Jesse uses virtual reality to give tourists a vision-quest experience. It’s demeaning, but it pays the bills. Then a tourist turns up who wants a really authentic experience.
abuseracismsubstance-use
"It is 2091, and Grace is staring at the rabbit in the corner of her visual overlay. It is an Angora rabbit, fluffy and white, and when Grace picked the icon out, she did not realize how much she would come to dread the sight of it. She moves, and the...
abusedeathmental-illnesspregnancy-losssexual-violencesuicide
As civilization is dying on Earth, a woman building a monument on Mars by remote control gets a message from a Mars colony long thought to be dead.
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicwar
The colonists on Dust usually hunker down for their years-long winter, especially when the companion star, Umber, blasts the surface with radiation, but a critical package from Earth needs to be retrieved now.
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In the ruins of far-future Earth, Mink’s tribe desperately needs the resources of a large building that vanished humanity left, but she needs to purge it of “ghosts” first—and it has lots of them.
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
Following a disaster in Antarctica, MacReady spends summer 1983 in New York and starts to wonder what he might have brought back with him.
body-horrordeathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-useviolence
"Paulie rushes out the elevator doors the moment they part, only to skid to a halt at the sight of his father’s wife. She shakes her head, but he doesn’t need the confirmation. If Tricia is out here and not in the hospital room with his father, it can only...
death-of-a-loved-one
A plague killed all the colonists before Saki’s ship arrived, and she has to investigate it while mourning the man she loved, who died down there.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Zee lives with her father in a windup world. Bored with her life, she decides to visit the carnival. She meets a boy, and things go from there.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
The town barely survives the vicious weather because of the young people who turn into “weathermen,” leaving their families behind.
death-of-a-loved-one
Months after mysterious aliens scattered their spacecraft across North America, no one has a clue what they want. Avery knows what one of them wants, though: it wants a tour.
animal-harmdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"My dear Cara, Thank you for sending me the photos, I never thought I’d feel this way again. But the pictures help. They really do. I can’t stop looking at them. Thank you for scanning and emailing them to me. These photos and our old videos are all I’ve...
"I will always remember the view of Paris from his window. Snow, pure and untouched, softens the outline of the buildings and covers the grime of the streets. White, the color of beginnings. His canvas is primed and ready to be painted, and stark winter...
death-of-a-loved-onewar
AirBody is like AirB&B except you rent out your body, not your home. Arsalan doesn’t expect any trouble from a middle-aged Pakistani woman, but everything she does reminds him of lost opportunities in his own past.
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
The aliens invited one human to their library 32.5 light-years away, and Hazel hopes to find lost research that might still save the Earth from final ecological collapse. If she can get in, that is.
deathpregnancy-loss
Lao Dao processes trash in a fantastic future "third-space" Beijing. To get money for his daughter's education, he makes a dangerous trip to first-space--a city that unfolds when his own Beijing sleeps.
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.
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
The crew of the new Mars mission are coming to the hotel where Emily works, and her mom is starting to say strange things about her involvement with the last Mars mission.
deathillness-and-pandemic
In which we learn how the new court magician was recruited and find out how even a “market rat” can qualify. We learn that there is real magic, but it comes with a price.
body-horrordeathviolence
Anat doesn't remember her parents, but she loves her brother Oscar. They live in a wonderful world full of strange creatures and machines. The more she learns, the stranger things seem.
deathviolence
Salman pursues the truth behind stories his grandfather told him about an impoverished princess he used to know back in Pakistan and the Jinn that protected her.
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"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...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Hannah watched her sister Melanie die, incinerated with her own magic. Hannah can't accept that and sets out to use her own magic to put things right.
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneself-harmsuicide
Alzheimer's patient's family can't visit her very often, so they buy a robot to fool her into thinking they're visiting her. The robot tells the story.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"A ship glides through the night, behemoth mother, swollen with ten thousand human lives. Her path is a single shining vector. There has been no stopping, no rest for the decades she has traveled, and there will be nothing but void for the two years to...
child-deathpregnancy-lossviolence
An android who knows nothing besides his work in a factory, is given one final week to explore the world before he is forced to undergo mandatory reprogramming, in this bittersweet precursor to TJ Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets.
body-horrordeath
"At first I thought something had broken in my book. I didn’t notice until the afternoon light from the windows began to recede. I tried to increase the brightness settings of the page, but no matter how I thumbed the margins, they would not change. For...
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-useviolence
An enhanced chimp and her human partner investigate an apparently pointless murder committed by a woman who was under remote control from an unknown source.
abusebody-horrordeathsuicideviolence
A key scientist in the Dai Viet interstellar empire has died, and three people who were close to her mourn her passing in different ways.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"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...
abusedeathviolence
"Doc, there’s a ... hole growing in me,” the alien said through the spherical interpreting machine hovering over them. Semau barely registered the word “hole,” so taken was she by the sight of the alien. If she were just a tad less caring about propriety,...
deathviolence
"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...
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Long ago, Sylvie turned herself into a tree to avoid rape, but she wonders if there might not be a better way.
sexual-violencesuicideviolence
"For the whole of the year that I now look back on as the best of my life, Susanna Miller’s act began twenty-three minutes after mine ended. I went first, to warm up the crowd, followed by the dog trainer, the hypnotist, Susanna, the twin acrobats, the...
mental-illnessmisogyny
The human terraformers didn’t realize there was native intelligence until it was too late to save them. Now it’s just a question of what to do with the time that remains.
deathviolence
In 1888 a woman suffering a hideous deformity was murdered in London. Today, her descendent wants to find the culprit.
deathviolence
The crew of the Themis colony write home about their struggles with a mission and a world that seems to be more than a little off.
mental-illnesssubstance-use
Madeline is having an adverse reaction to an experimental drug--she revisits episodes in her past.
"When Mark told you he was marrying your clone, you said “congratulations” on autopilot, because that’s what you say when your friend tells you they’re getting married, and you had promised to stay friendly after the divorce. You studied his face, his...
child-abuse
June’s sister Wanda suffered some kind of brain damage in an experiment aimed at learning the nature of reality. Two other people died in that experiment, and June would like some answers.
death
Only one nation has nuclear weapons, but their rules against using them require that things be so desperate that the President be willing to kill a child to get the launch codes.
deathviolence
A Chinese woman living in the Bay Area needs to raise money to get her daughter into Stanford. She tries to sell her English-language proficiency, but even after fifteen years, it’s not good enough. But her native fluency in Mandarin is worth a lot, if...
Mallory Iheji would do anything to watch her favorite artist’s lost movie, “The Hydraulic Emperor.” But what would she really sacrifice for it?
"When I met the young Mr. Turing, I had not yet ascended as Autumn’s King. Nowadays it has become fashionable for the sons and daughters of the lesser fey gentry to improve their position in the shifting hierarchy of the Courts by virtue of intrigue,...
deathsexual-contentsexual-violence
"The form is one page long. No back. Just a front. It should be longer. There are six copies of the form, all different colors. Like I’m working my way through the rainbow to the end where I’ll finally find peace. Red. A parent or guardian. I meet my...
abuseillness-and-pandemictransphobia
"There’s nights in the deep end of summer so hot and thick and wet you can feel the dark wrinkling up your fingers like bathwater—and my last night breathing was one of those. 2 a.m. came to ring my bell and found me perfectly awake, swinging back and...
abusebody-horrorviolence
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.
body-horrorviolence
"The causes of the disaster are these: First: The estimations of this planet’s temperature were incorrect. The beacon should never have been placed. This planet is no more capable of supporting human life than our own polar wastelands. Second: My...
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrorchild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
death-of-a-loved-one
Her mom has grown rich by telling people’s fortunes, but all Theresa Anne wants is for her girlfriend to be safe. And to be brave enough to actually talk to this “girlfriend.”
death
Samantha searches Paris to try to find what’s killing fallen angels.
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
People who don’t like living underground in the colony can live inside giant “whales” that float high in the planet’s atmosphere. That’s usually pretty safe.
death
Claire meets a handsome older man at a dinner party held in a virtual reality where something has gone subtly wrong.
"Upon my return to the village, it was my husband, Adamet, who took me gently by the arm and guided me across the docks spanning our marshes until we reached the preburial cottage overlooking the sound. We stood side by side in the shadows of the cottage,...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
A girl reckons with what she must lose–and who she has become–in order to be accepted at the empire’s most prestigious university.
deathviolence
"You’re asleep in dreams of your father holding your head underwater, so the call from Magnolia Assisted Living goes to voicemail. “I didn’t raise a son of mine to count on his fingers,” your father says in the dream—because ah, yes, it’s all of your worst...
abusechild-abuse
A photographer’s obsession with an unsettled subject exposes two friends to a darkness that won’t be contained by frames…
child-deathsuicideviolence
"Big Edie was a useless piece of shit. Johanna Telle found the most significant relationship of her life on a Saturday afternoon in late May, sitting on one of those excruciatingly handmade quilts crafty stay-at-homes used to make out of their precious...
deathviolence
In a sad, future Sri Lanka, the narrator watches his/her city die from the effects of sea-level rise and abandonment.
deathviolencewar
A magician dies on stage performing his most famous trick, but what really happened?
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
In a future Canada, a woman talks to her political-prisoner mother but wonders if it’s just an AI simulation of her.
illness-and-pandemicmental-illness
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
A young hockey player charged with murder on the moon seeks asylum on Earth, but unhappy Lunarians are trying to find him.
body-horrordeathmental-illnessviolence
Mebuyen doesn’t get many lost souls anymore—modern Filipinos have moved on—so when a bunch of young people start showing up whom she can’t send along, it’s time to visit the Earth and learn what’s going on.
child-deathdeathviolence
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.
deathsexual-contentviolence
Ostap can’t wait to visit his girlfriend and see her big project that’s trying to use quantum mechanics to develop faster-than-light travel.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
What if you tried to teleport and succeeded? What if you couldn’t manage to do it again?
Vincent lost his mom on one of the first Mars missions. He’s had a career as a successful author, but he’s always refused to talk about his mother. Fifty years later, he tells us how he decided to end his silence and write a book about her.
death-of-a-loved-one
Chaplin Win is in trouble for letting an unauthorized ghost talk with hospital patients, and inspectors are coming tomorrow.
deathillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
Author : E. M. Linden Narrator : Louise Hewitt Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums PodCastle 879: The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for grief, infant death, and a reference...
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"Hunter’s Moon rises fat and golden over the burned-out husk of the CN Tower. Excitement ripples through us, making us forget, for the moment, the hunger that gnaws our insides. The sign for the Library appears only on clear, full moon nights, and it’s...
deathviolence
"We used to cage them in the tide pools, when they were still small enough to capture in our little hands. Pull them out and snap photos that we could pretend to sell to magazines just like Papa. Them, gasping for breath, unable to see, fins fluttering. We...
abusebody-horrordeathviolence
"One hundred and eighty days. Today was it—the longest Annie had ever managed to stay at one job. The last time she had texted Charlie, it was to tell her “Charlie” was the name of a bomb and “Annie” was the name of another—this hadn’t gone as well as she...
illness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
"Now that I’ve failed as a woman, my punishment is to become a garden. I receive the verdict on a Sunday evening. They’re supposed to give you advance notice so you can put your affairs in order, but the letter is postmarked from more than a month ago—I’ve...
body-horrorpregnancy-loss
The sister of an abducted child is haunted by a sinister figure who may or may not be real…
"Mirae sits on her bed, parting her hair with one hand and feeling for the access port on the back of her head with the other. She finds the notched edges of the cap and twists counterclockwise until it comes loose. Her eye twitches as she slides the plug...
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"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...
abuseanimal-harm
"A hoodie is what a Soucouyant give birth to when she trick a Midnight Robber.” Or so Rose calls herself. Passed off to orphanages. No idea who her mother and father were. Didn’t know the source of herself. Because she wasn’t given a proper foundation to...
suicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
deathmental-illnesswar
"Today’s the day I have to make Emma break up with Cameron. I do it in the morning, to get it over with. As I queue Emma up in the Elaffin interface, Gray texts on our private channel, Good luck, Jude. And remember to follow through, even if he bawls. Of...
"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...
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"Charlie wasn’t a ghost standing in the corners of the house, but at the same time he was everywhere. He had been haunting my thoughts since we received Uncle Jamey’s emails and the plane tickets. Now, everyone gathered at our mother’s house, my childhood...
deathracismsubstance-usesuicideviolence
When he’s caught kissing another boy, one of Izuchukwu’s two big secrets comes out. But if they find out he can turn into a bird and fly, he’ll be in real trouble.
abusehomophobia
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.
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
After eighteen years, a colony ship reaches Neptune, and the children born on board wonder what their future holds.
With tremendous powers of regeneration, Mars is an incomparable killing machine, but he’s on the run, and there’s one special prisoner he’s determined to rescue.
deathgoreviolence
A young sailor wants to learn what the stars really are, and if it’s true there are people living there.
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.
animal-harmchild-deathviolence
Master Zhao shares his tale of how he discovered his time-travel ability and what he’s done with it. But why hasn’t he used it to become more successful?
deathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
Meant to clear plastic from the sea, the artificial “squids” have put the oceans off-limits to humanity. Not everyone takes that lying down.
death
The Dunyshar are stranded on an outpost, but NuTay dreams of going home to Earth.
A woman appears to be helping a child recover from some form of brain damage. His perceptions and memory are off, but something is off about her too.
child-deathdeathviolence
"You used to be in a band. Now you cut hair. The Institute hired you because you’re the daughter of the Floating City’s Founder’s fourth mistress, the one who always cooks up trouble when she gets too hungry. You don’t like the work, but you like all the...
abusesexual-violence
A disabled son care-taking for a disabled father tries to understand the mysterious blur haunting them.
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"Steve, over here! Turn to your right. Can we get a smile?” He falls back on his training easily enough, turns to the cameras, gives them his famous crooked smile, tilts his head just so as the flashes go off so they can capture the smoulder that...
"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...
child-abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Alvin’s scripts arrived in yellow envelopes. They were hand delivered, placed inside his letter box as if part of the regular mail, but with no address or stamps on it. The scripts were typed on unlined paper. They were short, never longer than a page,...
deathviolence
"The aquarium is different every time I die. Exhibits reshuffling like a deck of cards. The blood loss, though, that’s reliable. Death ninety-three was the jellyfish room: all those ghost bodies and moonsilk, limned radiant in the blacklight, jetting about...
abuseviolence
"Memories of Memories Lost" by Mahmud El Sayed is a story about the price of the things we choose to forget. Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by Mahmud El Sayed, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition read by Karim Kronfli and produced by Lian...
"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...
abusesexual-contentviolence
A woman who fears she’s failing as a painter and as an artist seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets and finds something even more wondrous, but also more impossible to capture on canvas…
"There was only one freight car down the wall into the Flood District, and it was shared by all bulk service providers who came bearing gifts: maintenance workers, solar installers, grocery and package delivery, and the like. A bing-bong meant another...
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...
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
"When they ordered me down off my pedestal, I had nowhere else to go. Life as a statue is easy. They make you ascend the pedestal, turn you to stone, remove your ability to move, and leave you to watch the turn of the seasons in a world you cannot touch or...
abuseviolence
Fear was already on the street waiting for her. Tulaya had seen this purge-and-nightmare Manifest before in Fatih, tagging the footsteps of an old man in the spice market with its shadow like claws.
death
"It’s not a real baby,” Jain says flatly. “And we should kill it.” Another sunless morning in the Waste. She and Stromile have woken up to a gift: a canister of pepto-pink fluid with an infant inside it. The tiny figure is chubby and squirmy and perfect,...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Yennie glanced out the window. An ice storm, a froth of glassy dust, was blowing in over the bone-colored hills. He was on Enceladus; his therapist was on Mars. He wanted to describe how sometimes his body felt hollow, and other times he felt his skin...
"Your grandfather is dead. Your instance gave you the news: a phone call in the dead of night that woke you from a dead sleep. “Hello?” you said, accented with slumber. “Is this Soyoung Kang?” your own voice said, accented with Korean. “Yes,” you said. The...
death-of-a-loved-one
"I’ve got a signal,” Cora said. “Elena, come look!” I rushed to Cora’s bank of computers. For six long, working-into-the-evening days, we’d gotten only the faintest of quantum signals, nothing usable. Our grant only gave us three weeks on the TU Delft...
deathsuicide
Pauly is a good son. When he brings home three beautiful Masquerades, he’s expecting that his mother will be proud of him. But when his mother begins asking favors of his Masquerades, he realizes that being a good son sometimes means disobeying.
"By the time I hear that my brother is looking for me, and has somehow scraped together enough credit to get on a commercial flight to New Tel Aviv, and that he’s also brought his three-year-old daughter on her first interplanet trip, my insides are...
deathsubstance-useviolence
Sequoia and her friends hate their overcontrolled world, where four generations have only been allowed a single child, making teens rare and coddled.
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-useviolence
Awenato is the only Uma’u on the space station after terrorists kill the rest of the diplomats from his world, including his lifemate. He wants revenge, but first he has to figure out how to just get by.
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrorwar
The narrator undergoes a special treatment that lets her revisit (and change) key memories that trouble her—all of which involve people she had sex with.
sexual-contentsexual-violencesubstance-use
Jorren gets a dangerous commission for magical clothes. One that might let her recover much of what she lost when she fell out of favor decades ago, but only if she can figure it out. And survive it.
In 2028, Kitty has a role in a play about a mass murder committed in 1978, but when she visits the setting of the crime, she’ll pulled into the past right before the crimes take place.
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Connor works at a restaurant in New York where he has a magical touch with food (literally). Problems with his family keep interfering with his career, though.
Isiuwa survived the apocalypse, and its people live on in the middle of a desert. The chief says leaving means certain death, but Nata thinks he’s lying.
violence
Detective Connolly is a dog in a world where some animals are “knowledgeable” and can talk like humans. A human professor hires him to help cover up a murder . . .
Judith takes a job as companion to a young man who appears to be terminally ill and has retired to a family estate by the sea.
An old woman travels to Beijing to find out what’s wrong with her son, and she relates her story to a taxi driver on the way home.
A mother talks to a scan of her daughter taken just a month before, ah, something happened. It’s a short conversation but it packs quite a punch.
death-of-a-loved-one
After memory-loss plague strikes the world, Gouda helps clients track missing family members they can barely remember—even though she can’t even remember her own last name.
The narrator and her friends go fishing for snakehead in a stream in Singapore, but the biggest one is something more than just a fish.
Sa races in dangerous places throughout time and space, but she’s getting old, the challengers are ruthless, and there are a lot of ways to get hurt in this sport.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrorchild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-onesubstance-useviolence
Mara has made a deal with a scavenger girl to help her rescue her best friend, who left the underground habitat to try to talk to the aliens and never came back.
body-horrorviolence
The narrator’s homelife has fallen apart since she told her husband she’s asexual, so they order a device that looks and talks like her, but with “improvements.”
mental-illnesssexual-contentsuicide
Ben Clarke travels to Hollywood to settle his late brother’s affairs. He learns a variety of things about his brother, but the biggest surprise is what he finds in the bedroom.
deathsubstance-usesuicide
The world is gradually being destroyed by what seems like an alien plague that attacks people and software alike. Caitlin lives in a seaside Scottish town, nursing her dying lover.
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
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.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Ava recounts the visit of the "Needlers" to Earth and her part in the attempts to communicate with the aliens.
Unknown Compartment There is no door where there should be a door—no hall where there should be a hall. The house has reconfigured itself, again, and I find myself before […]
body-horrordeathviolence
"He told me his mother was a spacecraft. We had just made love, and our bodies were spent and sweat-slicked, the scent of our seed mingling in the stables with the sweet musk of the drowsing horses. Our lids were heavy, but his muscles grew tense in my...
death
"The apartment is dark when I return, the blackout curtains doing their job of keeping the late afternoon sun out. It doesn’t matter, though. The air is stifling hot, thick and oppressive. Sweat gathers on my skin, sticking clothes to flesh. But I welcome...
death-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrordeathsuicide
"Even after Uncle Sulim died, he remained occasionally intolerable. “Did you check the pollen count inside the base?” “Yes, it’s at the higher limit of the acceptable range. Within two basis points.” Nika’s response was almost devoid of irritation. “I’ll...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"I ended up on Pluto on the night of my nineteenth birthday, after breaking my own stupid heart. It wasn’t even over anything important. All I did was jump in a pool, and then the chlorine got in my nose and I came up coughing on the side of the tiles, and...
sexual-violence
"For anyone who’s used the Skip system to travel more than once or twice, delays are simply part of the process. The one following my transit to Olympus lasts longer than most. I pass the time by looking for a way to bend the causative incident behind the...
"Half-painted in the angled mirror, I ignore my mother’s calls and sweep blush onto my temples. The face of Luz Divinity takes shape beneath my brush. My mother tries again as I tug a wig onto my shaved head, the unit sleek and long, and again as I zip a...
"If a robot stands alone in a field, staring into the forlorn distance as it obeys the last order it was given by a human, that order being, “Don’t move until we come back for you,” which it can remember uttered with a cruel sneer by a man who has taken a...
abuse
"In his early days in slivermoon, Saki worked the phone lines. Companies in slivermoon stressed in prestige magazines and press releases that it was too hard for them to employ bodies. Bodies were expensive to sustain. Bodies needed food, warmth, and...
A mother, left behind on Earth, receives a birthday card from her son, who is worlds away. How much time do we have together with the ones we love, especially when they grow up and away? How much is remaining? Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by...
death-of-a-loved-one
In "Kwong's Bath" by Angela Liu, Kwong is visited by the ghosts of the people she has trouble letting go. Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by Angela Liu, edited by Sachiko Ragosta. Audio edition read by Lauren Kong, with casting and production by...
death-of-a-loved-oneself-harmsuicide
"Umeboshi" by Rebecca Nakaba is an exploration of what it means to be connected through heritage—and chain email. Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by Rebecca Nakaba, edited by Sachiko Ragosta. Audio edition read by Heidi Tabing, with sound design by...
body-horror
"Your mother spends every evening working on her machine. It looks like no other machine you’ve seen. A hunk of metal on the ground, with wires stringing each section to the next. Like the inside of a giant robot’s belly, if someone cut it open to expose...
"Our generation ship never grows. Our faces—varied as the stars that swaddle us, far from everything we knew—never age. Do we learn, cut off from all the past? Do we change? I’ve asked myself these questions, and so many more, over the...
suicide
"Our storytellers sing that the Great River Gimamu brought life to the world when the gods first stepped out of it. But when I saw the ships that morning, I knew that it also brought death. As I sat at my stall, weaving the final threads of a new basket, I...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"The seven siblings sit in a place beyond the boundaries of space and time, where everything is made of stories. Even them. Especially them. People are made of stories too, but only the versions of their stories that they tell themselves. Curated, limited,...
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"The little girl was blonde and had very blue eyes. She stood on the steps to the house and stared at Mara without expression. “It lives in the closet,” the little girl said. “Klara…” her father said. He looked apologetically at Mara. “Please,” he said....
"The flutist peered over the ridge ahead of them. Wreathed in the sheerest cloth of fog, a city rotted. It was not a big city, maybe a town, maybe a village. The flutist was not of that age of plenty where plentiful things had names and could be easily...
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Vashti is a pathogenic diplomat—an ambassador to the world of viruses, whom she communicates with through a machine that can translate their chemical signals into images, tastes, smells, sounds, and memories. She begins a negotiation between the US...
deathillness-and-pandemic
A student of multiversal time travel slips from one version of New York to another, discovering that love may transcend timelines, but so too can heartbreak…
"She laid in bed and stared at the bottom of the bunk above her, riddled as it was with sticker and tape residue, which was stubborn as piss. The human race could contrive to send her to Venus, but it had not been clever enough to figure out how to remove...
deathsuicide
"Monday’s lover tugs at Jan’s ribbon with his teeth. Jan doesn’t yell at the lover to stop. The guy just received bad news from the front—a friend lost to a bomb, perhaps, a sibling blown to bits; Jan doesn’t ask. He tells the lover, instead, to be...
war
Children have always disappeared under the right conditions—slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else. Adventures are always interesting, but they’re...
"The intact remnants of Tess’ pressure suit sat alone at the bar, slumped before an untouched pint of beer. No one around the Waystation blamed Hae’cera for what they did after the reactor blew. According to the logs recovered after the accident, the blast...
A boy, desperate to escape the drudgery of life in his small town, gets caught up in the machinations of a traveling time keeper, and slowly watches his town and his life unravel by the seams.
death-of-a-loved-one
"It is in the summer, during the monsoon season in Taipei, when the pigeon keeper’s daughter moves into the apartment on the top floor of a building on an alleyway in Wenshan District. From her window, she sees not only Taipei 101 in the distance with...
"The infomercial jangles for DoubleSpace were never quite as catchy as the ones for its more expensive alternatives, and yet, you and I would hum them indiscriminately, little heads bobbing, lips vibrating, as we ran about the house. The day the installers...
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"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...
deathviolencewar
"Commander Maeb Len knows that, more than anything, an army needs hope in order to struggle onward. They need a vision to fight for and faith that the future will be better than the past. Better than the present. The People’s Army itself is one such hope....
deathwar
"The truth is that I lost my arm the same summer I lost my brother. Lost is a euphemism. In fact, my arm was retrieved by the paramedics and brought to the hospital, along with the two fingers severed from my left hand, and the various parts of my...
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"That first autumn it felt as if the whole world had been made for them—which, of course, it had. They walked down the avenue of oaks that reached above their heads like Gothic arches, red leaves drifting lazily down to collect at their feet. Ashwin was...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"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,...
death
"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.”...
child-deathdeath
"A pause only Winnifletch herself notices, a twinge in her guts as she unsacks the gull that Gert Mews has lugged to her sea-spindle shack. Dazed but not dead, the bird crawks down onto her workbench. Think of shearwater honey, Winni tells herself, with...
animal-harm
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.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onegore
Young Wipwai’s tribe has always fought their neighbors, but she’s secretly made friends with one of them, and they plot a future of peace.
child-deathdeathviolence
The narrator tries to find the path to the impossible ocean at the top of the mountain to dispose of the ashes of his/her parents, but there are obstacles in the way.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Truth be told, I have not done much with the entryway. It keeps up appearances. I am told it is a perfectly acceptable facsimile of a standard human receiving room. My handlers nod approvingly when I sit them on its low velvet cushions and shallow couch...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
death
"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...
deathself-harmsuicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
violencewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
A middle-aged man settling his dead mother’s estate discovers he can still slip through the wardrobe into a different world.
Everyone has a timer on their wrists counting down the years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until they meet their soul mates. Fiona’s just 24, and her timer says she’ll have to wait 40 years. So what to do until then?
It’s been a long time since Ravi left Guyana, but he’s sure he recognizes a Jumbie, even in New York, where they don’t believe in evil spirits. And it’s following him.
sexual-contentviolence
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.
abusesuicideviolence
An alien brain transplanted into a human child’s body serves as an involuntary translator. It’s not supposed to have volition or memories, but things don’t always work as advertised.
sexual-violenceviolence
Zayred and Meiri used to be close friends and powerful magicians who could win battles through singing, but now they’re devoted to destroying each other’s reputation.
deathwar
Jared has almost brought the princess to safety, but he worries that Kat, the crazy women who accompanies them, might have betrayed them.
sexual-violenceviolence
Jin is a mercenary hired to protect archeologists investigating an ancient ship built by the extinct human race.
child-deathdeathviolence
After the government rules he isn't really human, Chris loses his human wife and hybrid kids.
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
A government agent secretly watches Ryx (age 10) and Hector (age 19) because they both have dangerous “variant” abilities.
deathsubstance-use
Xin’s orderly life on Eighth Colony changes forever when she ushers a mutilated body through the portal.
deathviolence
A member of a group of powerful beings who make stories real tells us the truth about Solomon Grundy and why he had to die.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Ellie is trying to catch a train from Boston to DC so she can visit her ailing mother when her sister calls to tell her she needs to "go to the skunkworks and repair the physics of this universe."
illness-and-pandemic
In alternate-history America, an uplifted chimp gets certified as a person and goes to the moon.
A woman paramedic and her best friend fear that despite their best efforts, they end up causing more pain than they relieve.
deathsuicide
All the imaginary creatures a young person could want to make apartment life more pleasant.
A lonely old Chinese man gets involved in the fight against smog--without government approval.
illness-and-pandemic
From childhood, Flora, painted disturbing paintings, and her nurse fears the young lady carried this obsession into adulthood.
deathillness-and-pandemic
"On the necropolis space station of the Tau Andromeda planetary system, the keepers of the tomb attended to the dead and the dying. They cleansed, prepared, and prayed over the bodies. They performed the last rites, paying intricate attention to the...
death
"They are travelling in the great dark before them nothing behind them stars just the two of them the man that captains and the ship that sails darts flies through space —whoever said space is empty did not know what they were talking about space is full...
body-horrorsexual-content
"High above the Amazon Rainforest, Hynd circled, her massive wingspan only visible by the shadow she cast on the battlefield below. She felt the wind pass across her wings, whispering of torrential rain coming; not her concern, so far above the clouds, but...
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...
death-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
A transnational adoptee is haunted by the ghost of his birth mother. Content warnings: Self-harm, suicidal ideation Copyright © 2025 khōréō magazine. Story by Woody Dismukes, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition read by Sam Cavalcanti, with...
body-horrorgoreself-harm
Two ex-military nurses, one human and one alien, share a friendship in a city following an alien invasion.
racismviolencewar
"Dekar Druid lives in an infinite library. Besides Ebizenum, who is in a special category of their own, he is the only living person in the library’s single tower. Outside, a forest surrounds the tower. There’s a lake a short walk to the north and a peak...
"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...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
Following a mysterious world-wide event that makes ghosts visible, a young woman is invited to attend Ghost Camp.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"The city of Nan Rhok stands on the ridge of a great mountain, where a gullet of steaming water flows from volcanic hot springs. The ridge is narrow and the mountain chill, so the city hews close to the spring, building high its granite towers. The name of...
child-deathdeath
"Night to day. In Diyu, the Earth Prison, Chun Wei opened her eyes. “Day” in the realm of the dead registered only as a less pervasive chill to the stagnant air. Not that Chun Wei needed to breathe any longer. She unfolded from the lotus position she’d...
death
"I learned from Bernadette that there are two ways a star can go supernova. The first is in a double star where one partner dies first, turning into a white dwarf, and the surviving partner swells in grief and dumps mass onto the compact star. But the...
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Author : Ruth Joffre Narrator : Julia Rios Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Dean Kidd Discuss on Forums PodCastle 916: Woodpecker, Warbler, Mussel, Thrush is a PodCastle original. Rated G Woodpecker, Warbler, Mussel, Thrush by Ruth Joffre Yesterday, I...
"El detonated the EMP against the feeder’s sensor, a delicate organ that he had only seen in fragments, suspended in cytology slides the shape of dominoes. The lab just days ago had been inundated with new specimens, washed up on the long white beaches...
body-horrordeathself-harm
"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...
deathsexual-contentviolence
"Hey there—comrade—are you also part of the—Space Industry—Development Program—First Cohort? I’m Zhang Haoyu—second lieutenant—pleased to meet you.” The man in front of me spoke in choppy fragments. He extended his hand, heedless of the puzzled looks...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onemental-illness
"Ambassador Shǐ Guì Sūn Yán and Prime Minister Xiang Hu Li Yáng floated in the crystalline water tank at one side of the courtroom. Beyond the anchoring shelves for the judges, the bulbous organic diamond window looked out onto a swollen, orange, solar...
"We called it the monster because we could, though none of us found the label to be particularly satisfying. After a certain point, Yerim started calling it the Logos Pilgrim. Which was understandable, seeing as how she was the most mystically inclined...
"In the pre-dawn light she lies in bed, gazing through the window at graceful trees silhouetted against a turquoise sky. The air is still, the pretty room orderly and calm. She lies motionless except for her eyes, the soft blue quilt rising and falling...
death
"Salty swell over my head, tugging me back, the raw and tender creases of my elbows against the forearms they're linked with. Brine up my nose, in my mouth. The anchor of my feet in the sand holds me fast with the rest. The water recedes and we breathe, a...
body-horrordeathsuicide
"1.8 billion miles from the sun, my roots dig deep into the soil of a small garden. I am a curious thing—an aspiration. Everything else on Miranda is ruthlessly utilitarian, but I am ornament. I am beauty. This garden nominally exists to facilitate some...
"Yesterday, I didn’t care much about much. Back then, there hadn’t been any cars in the parking lot. We didn’t see any muddy footprints stamped into the dirt. Not even the hoofprint exclamations of deer. The weather was partly to blame, but really people...
deathracismviolence
"Black Quadrangle, Mesolithic era Unknown Charcoal on sandstone This work, created c. 15,000 BC (17,000 AS), precedes earliest surviving written texts. It was rediscovered alongside human remains and burnt carbon deposits, suggesting a role in a burial,...
"A syringe with a magnetite needle that would frighten even the boldest of souls. A torture device. But for my sister Kata, it would be a piece of the divine that shouldn’t be on the Aldarish Society Museum for Byrnyan Culture. That pretty much sums up how...
"It slips, now—I know it slips. There are men in my parlor, in uniforms, crisp navy, badged. Police. Beyond them Eveline wavers in a yellow nightgown, hands clasped to her chest, eyes wide and worried—no, no, she doesn’t, she’s not here, I’m dreaming her,...
deathmental-illnesssuicide
"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."
body-horrordeathgore
"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...
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Driver, gharivala, beta, bhai-jaan, baba. All the words used to address me; so rarely do I remember being addressed by my name. Not to complain. I don’t think people ever meant to be disrespectful. But having someone to respectfully, lovingly,...
"Joy catches my eye, shuffles my direction. Her face lights the dining room. Her curly gray hair is the sun’s corona, and she seems to float above her walker, needless of her stiff little legs. In seeming slow motion she arrives at the seat across from me....
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"You’re not meant to fix what happens in the time loops. Doctor’s orders, and that comes even before they give you the survey and the spiel and the confidentiality speech. The psych fiddles with his tablet in his cozy, yellow-couch office, and talks to you...
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
In a post-nuclear event Silicon Valley, a man grieving the loss of his wife struggles to find comfort when he is forced to communicate with his neighbors’ AI devices, rather than the people themselves.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horror
"Deng Baolin is my paternal aunt, my father’s little sister. Dad says Auntie was beautiful when she was young, with a bright-eyed gaze, pure yet alluring, and a slender, curving waist. When happy, her face was like springtime. When sorrowful, she was like...
"In the belly of the ship, the Machinist toiled. Beyond the walls of her workshop, ships of dark metal pursued her across the Atlantic, their hulls unaffected by the gnashing teeth of thunderstorms. Lightning flashed horizontally across the bay. Those dark...
deathviolence
"The alert comes screaming in on Jana’s implant, bright light lancing through the fog of REM sleep: [New glyph. Intersection of 148th and Cliffton.] When her eyes snap open, it’s there, the only thing fully in focus. A blurry image of the yet-untitled...
"He is King Lear in the window’s sunshine. There is pastina boiling on the stove in a kitchen as familiar as his soul. Mad monologues push against his fogged oxygen mask, vibrating with his tremoring lips, his ragged breathing, the impossible weight of the...
body-horror
"Even though the armistice has held for nearly a year now, I know it could shatter at any moment, trapping me here behind enemy lines. The war raged for nearly fifty years—the simple inertia of violence dictates a renewal of hostilities sooner or later....
violencewar
"Q: What (or who!) is Eudaimon? A: We are a nonprofit organization that empowers people to live their best lives. A “life,” in our view, is best defined simply as a contiguous sequence of experiences, and thus the best life is the one consisting of the...
death-of-a-loved-one
"The sketch showed a young woman, her face a perfect oval, holding our base in her cupped hands. Behind her head, Saturn hung golden within its halo of rings. That was the first sign that religion had come with us to Enceladus. I had risen early in the...
death
In the small city of Mehranpur, the Nawab suspects there may be a connection between the slow wasting of a beloved tree and the fate of the city itself.
Commander Niaja vrau Erezeng is up against an enemy that doesn’t just destroy all the beings, ships, and planets in its path, but also consumes their greatest arts, scratching them from existence everywhere…
deathwar
"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...
body-horrordeath
"You knew from the beginning. You knew because the world knew about the intricate and fascinating life-cycle of the Svarrs, and it had been documented and discussed everywhere throughout the media endlessly. And you knew because Vo made sure you...
"Because Waigong ran out of money due to the rice shortage, he gambled away my mother, an eighteen-year-old girl known for her beauty and dance prowess. She danced like a majestic water dragon, elegant and unstoppable while flowing through the atmosphere,...
misogyny
"When I die, I want you to keep my bones.” Vasanthi floats in the dark pool, the softness of her voice punctuated by softer drops of water from stalactites. “You mean your ashes.” The best misunderstandings come from our language differences. “I’ll find...
death-of-a-loved-onewar
"Examination rooms are safe. They stay what they are. The memories they drag to the surface make sense. You assume it’s because you’ve been in so many hospital rooms that your brain is packed with too much realism to have space for the random connections...
death-of-a-loved-one
A weary resilience worker should know better than anyone: no one is safe when the world is always ending…
death
"Azahn had been the ninety-third Imperial Foresight to the Dynasty of Silken Flame for only three weeks when he was forcibly retired. His body had been blessed by the holy waters of the Sky-Vein River, and he had earned the named-blade Stalwart Thy Mind,...
death-of-a-loved-one
"I am waiting for Helen on her fiftieth birthday. On the table, there’s a crystal drinking glass and a vase with rare orchids; I can’t tell if the flowers are genuine or not. Faint piano notes and a cold scent drift in the air. Beautiful men and women sit...
"and in a strip mall parking lot off a side road in some Baltimore suburb my hand is trembling as I take the last of the voidwater in its little bootleg dropper and I peel my eyelid back and though I am so careful and try so hard a bit of the precious...
self-harmsubstance-usesuicide
"The entire time they were walking towards the Dragon Stairs, Giền said nothing. She merely changed shape in Thanh Lan’s arms—not growing heavier and heavier, which Thanh Lan could have understood, but by turns lighter and heavier, her shape shimmering...
deathviolencewar
"Nobody noticed the first few. They walked. One by one, in the beginning. Isolated instances. On every continent, mid-meal, mid-shower, mid-work, mid-fuck, right out the door of a pulled-up car in the middle of a freeway—ordinary people turned their backs...
death-of-a-loved-one
"There was a small store in Manila, inside the walls of Intramuros, accessible to the wealthy and powerful, between a clothing store and a jewelry store. Children in clean crisp clothes, usually with parents or carers, stood before the store window,...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Downwind from the encampment, the wind stank of refuse. The stench of people weeks into an unwashed trek intensified as Yue Ling limped out of the tree line, raising her hands over her head as she slowly approached the sentries. Both were young, younger...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Chelle’s friend, Wenqian, has everything Chelle doesn’t. A slim figure, pale skin, and most notably the affection of her longtime friend Preston. Like the ocean waves she calls home, Chelle feels transparent and overflowing all at once. So when she’s given...
body-horror
"The Grieving House rises like a lighthouse from the artificial snowdrifts, its windows blazing honeyed gold. The clean lines of it look too much like a grave marker. The House was built to give the bereaved some sense of togetherness and let them guide...
violencewar
"We cannot go landwise. Too vulnerable for a start, and the finless watch their beaches like crabs, scuttling this way and that, their eyes pinched and ugly. They have set a line of posts on the edge of the world, deep in the sands. Each spike bears the...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
PseudoPod 807: The Bleak Communion of Abandoned Things is a PseudoPod original. I accept the house in lieu of a settlement. I don’t want Ashley’s dirty money. The house is the least ill-gotten thing she owns, an isolated property she won in a card game and...
abusedeathmental-illness
"The dome star was the only light in the nighttime sky. Ben Stokes watched from the tower at the center of the common area as the star flickered and buzzed. Bulb is about to burn out, he thought as the soft pulses of light feathered the edges of park...
death-of-a-loved-one
"James had always been able to tell when Camille was eavesdropping. Even though she kept her eyes carefully focused on the messages on her band while she poked at the remains of her salad, it would not have fooled him. He wouldn’t scold her in public, but...
death
"For Future Generations" by Rachel Gutin What do terrestrial traditions mean when you have to leave the only world you've ever known? This contemplative sci-fi explores the choices a rabbi must make for her congregation. Copyright khōréō magazine 2021....
"Home brews coffee; black, no sugar. She maintains the temperature of the coffee at precisely sixty degrees Celsius. Most of the coffee sloshes over the jagged edges of the half-shattered mug. Rough holes have been torn through the matte plastic back of...
"You never expect to meet one of the refugees. You aren’t a scientist or a politician, you’re a middle school history teacher. The story of the refugees from a destroyed parallel Earth... should fade into the background of your life like every other major...
death
"Stars snap into place outside Lura’s cockpit. A red giant twenty degrees off her ship’s nose has visibly shifted position. The nebula above her has grown more diffuse. She exhales, clicks the button to log another successful breach, and lets herself blink...
death
"Lamia burst like a shattered glass into the scream and scouring heat of desert wind, loosing the power that had lived in her ever since she had returned from the Refiner of the Desert. Her fire lashed across the wide plaza atop the Spire where she had...
deathviolence
"Two days after my brother turned seventeen, he was gone, just like he’d guaranteed my dad. No sad goodbyes, no notes, no taking a knee in the hall before dawn to give me any good advice for high school when I got there. My mom’s story when anybody asked...
racismviolence
"Sister," pants the white fox as it dangles upside-down from the railing, its tail like a question mark, its grin like something the devil had won from Saint Peter. “You’re getting soft.” I pinch my midriff and shrug, winking an eye. “I’ve been busy.” “No,...
violence
"For as long as I can remember, I have always been two people. My earliest recollection is of myself as a three year-old boy, Danny—and at the same time as a girl of the same age, Cristina. Another early memory is of playing in the rubble of the...
"The day they took my mouth hadn’t been spent eating De la Rosas, or smoking, or spitting. In fact, I hadn’t used my mouth in any way that you might expect someone who was about to lose their sense of taste, their tongue, their voice, might have."
"The song begins like this: “Once there was a fishgirl who sacrificed her heart and life and voice for a prince, and her reward was a path to heaven.” All those stories, about fishgirls yearning for legs... Are human storytellers really so arrogant,...
suicideviolence
"I know only an irrational panic. I try to collect myself only to find my faculties are not my own but that of an internal imperative guiding my, quite incomprehensible, actions. Run a parallel diagnostic, recalibrate magnetic relay B4, load the ballistic...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"For the longest time I could only get sliding jobs. It didn’t depress me, though; it seemed like a natural place to start. There was still time. I was sleeping rough in Wellington when I got my first job. I hitched from Palmy into the Hutt and started...
"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...
abuse
"We have only legends now for when our ancestors first saw the monster. They saw it shred light as it approached, then devoured whole worlds. They ran the calculations—they still used machines for that, used machines for everything—and they knew our rock...
death
When young Ira arrives for her appointment, she is prepared to be transported to The Gateway to Heaven, 6,070 light years away. But the technicians shepherding her through the process fear there’s more to it than what’s advertised.
death
"If you had a warp drive, it would be easy. The mathematics are strange the way ley lines are strange, invisible yet divinable. You’ve pulled your way up sterner mountains, fingertip by fingertip. You’ve already compensated for stellar motion, spacetime...
The Path Through Time” is Jules’s favorite part of the museum, a marvelous exhibit that brings the past to life, from the present all the way back to the prehistoric. Tonight at his aunt’s wedding reception as Jules walks along the path, it comes alive...
"But think—if we succeed, I’ll acquire a whole boxful of memories. Big, jewel-like memories whose sharp edges will tear my master’s world around me like old silk. I’ll escape. Eat a whole orange rather than a mere pip. Oranges are bright, like the sun. Do...
"The best way to hide a red mouth is to know exactly when your gums start to bleed. If you check your teeth every so often with a quick swipe of the tongue, and you get a bit of that saltiness, you’ll learn to take a swig from a canteen and rinse before...
substance-use
"Dong Fang still clearly remembers the joyous love of that rainy night. It seemed quite bad at first. After three years of dating and two years of marriage, their formerly shy and sweet explorations had become routine business. Nevertheless, he was in the...
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Gil teaches students how to communicate with the Numens, vast, star-spanning alien intelligences indistinguishable from gods.
deathsuicide
After the AIs won the war, they still found ways to keep humans busy, and Cal’s starship is responsible for finding and evaluating human colonies that were lost during the war.
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"It is not the dust that brings her tears. The Lachrymist’s house is dusty, fragments of time and memory fallen everywhere, a living blanket that drapes itself over tables and chairs and things even stranger. But time and memory are to be expected anywhere...
A teenager struggles to relate to his mother who’s trying to help build an automatic translation system so he can speak their language more like a native.
self-harmsubstance-use
"They’d built a new Vault of Potions after the flood—of course they’d had to, with the thaumatically cursed mess that had become of the old one. Still, it made me twitch and reach for my wand, walking along the familiar tree-lined quad and hearing the...
deathviolence
Benedetto makes his living running a calligramancy shop, where he makes magic via writing. Today, he snapped, closed the shop, and started an elaborate spell of unknown purpose.
child-death
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.
deathgoreviolence
Teenage Dorothy accompanies her father across the US in search for the mythical Viper-King, a giant snake whose fat confers wisdom on the first person to eat it.
violence
The narrator works to salvage the memories of someone who’s upload to virtual reality didn’t go smoothly.
death
Noah is a busy man with a lot of work to do on the moon since he and his partner went independent, but his wife’s illness is a big distraction, and there are hints that other things are seriously wrong.
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
No longer entirely human, Luis revisits his childhood home and reflects on how the world ended.
deathviolence
Two selkie women, childhood friends who’ve drifted apart, get together for an adventure in an abandoned human mine.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
deathsexual-violenceviolence
While one man spends all his income on dreams, another works hard creating those dreams.
death
A terminally ill astronaut begs everyone she can think of to give her a chance at one last mission so she can die in space.
death
A grieving father tries to recreate the son he lost.
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
The Golden Crusader must be getting old or something. He’s not so fast anymore, and he never flies higher than the sixth floor, but he keeps doing super deeds. Or trying to.
When teenage Guerre is called to be a cropsinger, she makes a big sacrifice to serve her family and community, but her brother refuses to accept it.
death
A young man fleeing the ruin of his career returns to his home village seeking the first girl he ever loved and a resolution to a mystery that has haunted him.
While Glen mourns the recent death of his baby sister, he gets a CD in the mail with a custom program she had someone design before she died.
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
Rielle accepts an offer from her husband’s rival to play accompaniment for his daughter in a competition. They need the money, but there’s something too perfect about this daughter.
Lia’s mother wants her to dress like a lady, but their city is about to fall to the enemy, and what they really need to do is flee.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
When an unkillable black crow haunts the princess, Wynn goes beyond the kingdom to find the only weapon that can destroy it.
death
Rourou is a Chinese little girl who loves her papa but wonders what happened to her momma. And why she can’t remember anything before age 5. And why she speaks fluent English.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In an Ireland recovering from the great famine of the 2030s, a young woman gets a job with an older doctor who’s growing odd things in her garden.
deathviolence
Sheru is a dog in an Indian city. He’s captured by researchers experimenting with deep learning. And he’s sad.
Hand-written notes in a book about imaginary places tell a woman’s story of her attempt to survive a fascist takeover of the United States.
It has only been five years since The Fall, but the clinic where teenage Kath works is the only medical service for two hundred miles.
Nell left Koohar long ago, but now she’s trying to help the people fleeing from the ruins of the planet.
death
Charlie's team has been out of touch with the Mars mission for a month. While she's attending her mother's funeral, a mysterious 47-second-long message arrives.
death-of-a-loved-one
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.
deathgoreviolence
A two-man team must risk a spacewalk when meteoroids threaten crucial portal-spanning telecommunications cables that hang a hundred meters beneath the ocean…and forty-five billion light years away.
"USER: this is a message for Milwaukee Elementary’s curator Jude Towers, I hope this is the right address. anyway thanks for the story you had RIGHTR generate for my 10th graders’ Empathy Week. it was really great! can you tell me more about it? CURATOR: I...
mental-illnessracismtransphobia
"…but what is it like, having a war criminal as your past life?” Sadie Salazar, Licensed Life Speaker, should have been professionally above the prurient interest lighting her hazel eyes, and much too old for the giddy excitement that lifted the corners of...
sexual-violencesuicidewar
A woman losing her sight turns to small family magics to save the lives of those she loves the most.
war
"She rose, feeling the aches where the dead had touched her, and gathered him in her arms. She’d hold him tighter this time. Oh, he’d fight her all the way, but they could get back on their way to the isle and the elf-king, and it would be over at last."
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Outside the viewport, light and shadow stitched a tapestry across the surface of Himalia. The shuttle ticked the countdown, thrusters firing to control descent to the docking cradle at Base Camp. I videoed everything, but the footage looked like a million...
"I watch the King sleep beside me and worry over the rapid movements behind her eyelids. The air in the bedroom smells faintly of something burning. My mouth is dry—I wet my lips and hold my breath so as not to disturb my King’s sleep. I can hardly see the...
death
While all her friends’ fish are changing into mermaids, is 12-year-old Anissa’s fish becoming something else?
death-of-a-loved-one
"You were six the first time you had a vision of someone’s death—your parents. The vision came when y’all were walking to the park and you were between them, holding their hands and heading towards the monkey bars. The vision was blurry and foggy like...
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-content
"On a Thursday night in Harvestmonth, when the moon rises round and bronze as a new betrothal promise watch, is the warlike thrice-veiled Mother of Mákhesthaines, crowned in her black silk mantles embroidered with skulls, permitted across the Holy Square...
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
illness-and-pandemic
"Do you remember the war? No, of course not. You were too small, a solemn-eyed toddler in Má’s arms. You were born in the year of the rat, a lucky, ambitious year. I was two years older, year of the dog, loyal to the end. You were little souris, little Em,...
death-of-a-loved-onewar
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...
abusemisogynyviolence
An acclaimed musician and her apprentice travel to the newly freed country of Skinnere to play a complex and culturally fraught song that will lay bare the wounds of empire, occupation, and sacrifice of its players and listeners.
body-horrorracismwar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
After war destroys their homeland, the Butterfly People come to Ksmal as refugees. They’re welcome, but only if they assimilate, and not everyone is happy with that.
death-of-a-loved-onewar
With Celia’s mistress missing, and presumed dead, the old, failing android is a prime suspect, but she herself doesn’t remember what happened.
sexual-contentsexual-violence
Some nights shining lights appear atop hills in urban areas, and people who walk into them disappear—some say to fairyland. A cop who thinks otherwise tries to talk a young woman out of trying it.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Hiding from her own problems, Winona volunteers at the local ornithological museum after she hits a bird with her car.
abusedeathracism
She was 15 when a dragon abducted her. 16 when a prince rescued her and married her. Now she's 55, returning to the cave where she was held.
Shi handles elderly clients who are recruited to help steer starships through space. Her job is winding up, and one of her last clients presents a special challenge.
mental-illness
An Arab-American girl and her mother wander the Dakotas while the girl tries to get in touch with a boy she once knew.
death-of-a-loved-onewar
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.
abusesubstance-use
1. A photograph in black and white, taken with a Zenit vintage Soviet camera. Taken outside what would much later become Tong Yun City, in the days when it was still just a cobbled-together mass of crash-landed jalopies, connected with primitive tubing...
death-of-a-loved-one
When her mother is absorbed into the local flesh monolith, Kayla struggles with her identity and looks for a way in. Content warnings: Violence, nudity, racism/discrimination, body horror Copyright © 2026 khōréō magazine. Story by Mary Miseon Wu, edited by...
body-horrorracismviolence
Part 1: 2075 <It might be good for you to take a new route,> said Aly. Xavi jogged out of his tenement building. He joined the stream of lunchtime runners […]
substance-usewar
This episode features "Aly" written by Grace Chan. 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/chan_05_26 Support us on Patreon at...
mental-illnesswar
Teresa finds the first site right after she gets back from maternity leave, Daniel snug in a baby sling at her chest. He’s quiet as far as babies go, sleeping […]
death
This episode features "Archaeological Evidence for the Time Traveler" written by Tia Tashiro. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
death
Tell me a story where it all goes right. Say that we only ever stopped at the station with the largest wingspan and busiest fuel pipes, the fifty-something spears jutting […]
deathviolence
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...
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 […]
deathviolencewar
When we moved Dad to the care facility, his only complaint was the Wi-Fi. “Laggy,” he called it when he was having a good day. “Fucking piece of shit,” he called it the rest of the time. At first I was relieved. I’d been worried that he’d bristle at the...
death-of-a-loved-one
Despite the two hundred and fifty-two million years that separate us, I feel close to you tonight, dear trilobites.
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
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...
body-horrordeathgore
Author : Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko Narrators : David D. Levine and S.B. Divya Hosts : Alasdair Stuart and Tina Connolly Audio Producers : Summer Brooks and Adam Pracht Escape Pod 1031: The Anatomy of Miracles (Flashback Friday) is an Escape Pod original....
Author : S. C. Mills Narrator : Hugo Jackson Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1040: Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses is an Escape Pod original. Loss of an infant Sponsored by Mixtape Stories Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses by S....
child-death
Author : Sharon Joss Narrator : Torin Andrus Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Love in the Time of Dust and Venom originally appeared in 2013 Fiction River – Time Travelers. Includes a form of assisted suicide. Sponsored by Mixtape Stories...
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Author : Kameron Hurley Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “When We Fall” was originally published on Kameron Hurley’s Patreon, and also featured in Escape Pod 611 in January 2018. Intense, life-threatening...
It’s the second Thursday of the month, so I spend the evening regenerating my skin. The procedure is painless but dull. I often fall asleep. It’s fine to do so; […]
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
This episode features "Eternity in Their Hearts" written by Katherine Khan. 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/khan_04_26...
death-of-a-loved-one
After the braiding, a low buzzing remains in Memoire’s ear. It reminds her of the low buzzing she heard while they shampooed her hair. They told her she could never submerge her head in water after the braiding. No more swimming. No more drifting on her...
body-horror
Bring your sister and I will tell you the story of how the waters returned to Apicuya. No, bring all the children. This is important. Don’t splash. If you cannot hear the thrum of the skymill, you are being too loud. Sit in the shallow pool, otherwise your...
child-deathdeath
Maybe we overestimated ourselves, I thought, watching the ferries hum against the wine-dark sea. Even if we floated above it, we were still bound to the ocean, engulfed in all its weight and inescapable history. To believe otherwise was a kind of hubris....
Before the world ends, Miri’s family saves up enough money to escape to 2004. 2004: a safe haven. The year lilts off the tongue, like a promise. Miri and Lise spend their last evening together in their favorite spot, sitting on the top of the holotower at...
Kate was cursed by her cousin on his deathbed to never stay. She and her cousin Bo didn’t hate each other—far from it. They’d grown up together: same small farming town in the inland northwest, population 394. So small that when Bo finished high school, he...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
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 […]
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...
deathgoresexual-content
Authors : Rachel Gutin, Christina Trujillo and Toshiya Kamei Narrators : Jess Lewis, Sandra Espinoza and Amal El-Mohtar “Peppermint Tea” previously published by Baffling Magazine “Ghosts” previously published in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine. This...
death-of-a-loved-one
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...
body-horrormental-illnesspregnancy-loss
Author : Anna Kahn Narrator : Nicola Chapman Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 932: Carina is a PodCastle original. Rated PG-13 Carina by Anna Kahn “I’ve had a baby. Still feels strange that you don’t know that — I’ve been looking...
Author : Beth Goder Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published in Strange Horizons, February 2025 Content note: spiders Rated PG Arachnomorphosis by Beth Goder At night, Olivia becomes a...
mental-illness
Author : Mar Vincent Narrator : Rosie Sentman Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie PodCastle 936: Ananconfabulation is a PodCastle original. Rated G Ananconfabulation by Mar Vincent Our homes are buried, so we built tunnels. From Tomas’ window...
Author : C. L. Clark Narrator : Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali Host : Wanini Kimemiah Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie Previously ran as episode 519 as a PodCastle Original Rated PG-13 Burning Season By C. L. Clark It was burning season in Rashid. Again. Even in the...
deathviolencewar
Authors : Gregory Marlow, RJ Aurand and Jeanna Cammarano Narrators : Karen Menzel (née Bovenmyer), Rosie Sentman and Dani Daly Host : Wilson Fowlie Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie PodCastle 950: FLASH FICTION EXTRAVAGANZA: Reapings is a PodCastle original....
child-deathdeathsuicide
Author : C. J. Lavigne Narrator : Nicola Chapman Host : Tarver Nova Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 951: TALES FROM THE VAULTS: ‘Til Death is a PodCastle original. Content note for grief Rated PG-13 ‘Til Death by C. J. Lavigne My dear Clarinda, They...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents Louis Inglis Hall's 'Cold Comfort' read by Emmie Christie. Subscribe to the Strange Horizons podcast: Spotify
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
I have done my best to transcribe the account found in the recently excavated cenotaph, but, as you’re aware, these experiential simulations don’t easily lend themselves to direct reproduction. Nonetheless, […]
death
This episode features "Scion: Afterword" written by Thomas Ha. 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/ha2_03_26 Support us on...
1. I’m sorry, my lord. 2. I miss the sound of your voice, deep enough to shake the mountain fortress’s stones. I miss feeling it rumble in the soles of my feet. I miss the glow of your eyes while you paced the Chamber of Mysteries, lava burning in the...
abusemental-illnessviolence
CHAPTER ONE Captain Ignatius Faber’s eyes were full of halos, and each scratch in the Philoctetes’ viewscreens caught the light, bleeding across his retina like stars. His vision had weakened […]
deathviolencewar
There is no formula for forgetting. No precise way to erase the pain. Complete healing is impossible. Because there is always a little needle sticking inside. A pain so slight […]
death-of-a-loved-one
This episode features "The Forgetting Code" written by Malena Salazar Maciá. 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/macia_04_26...
death-of-a-loved-one
The wall of the city is made of glass, smooth and clear, slippery and strong. The stranger and his dog wear a path outside it every day, watching, listening, waiting to be ready. The wall is about three times the stranger’s height, perhaps a bit taller. As...
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
A year of living in the ground had not accustomed Moyer to the smell. He wondered how the French, who’d been at this business so much longer, could stand it. But if the officers who had trained his unit in the intricacies of trench life were any...
deathwar
On a wooded hillside outside Pittsburgh, where the rivers braid together and the bridges flash yellow in the sun, there stands an old private school no one ever remembers enrolling in. Ivy grips its cracked bricks. Moss blurs the leaded windows. To almost...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
We’ll skip ahead. Say eight minutes in, so I’m not wasting your time. You’re in your chair, strapped tight, taking around eight Gs. Like this, they wouldn’t even feel that bad, all the force coming from front to back, pressing you down into your seat. Your...
Open your eyes. Look down at your hands. What do you see? Your life is never the same after you get into the car with that bitch Sophia, who was […]
abuseself-harmsubstance-use
This episode features "The Scent of Memory" written by Zhao Haihong and translated by S. Qiouyi Lu. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
The bus jerked, waking Shijun. The Greyhound was speeding down a wide North American road. What am I doing here? The coach window framed the landscape: White clouds floated against […]
The creatures who shared your art with us had to explain many things to make it minimally comprehensible. This by itself made sense. You are who and what you are, and we are who and what we are, and the physical differences between us are profound. We...
suicide
The most surprising thing about my journey (well, the first most surprising thing) is that the dream I experienced while traveling lasted a thousand years, a single dream stretching all the way to the Iota star in the Gemini constellation. I dreamt of...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
In summer, when the ocean ebbs at dusk, when the sand turns to glass and it becomes impossible to discern the difference between reflection and sky, the Tide Folk emerge from their pools. You might think, if you clamber on the cliffs searching for those...
1. Sky of Change Three hours ago, Dharsh had woken in his seaside colony with little more than a vague sense of himself. Now, he teetered on an obsidian ledge […]
When 2008 hit and I got laid off from Circuit City, a friend of mine managed to get me work at the local supermarket deli. It was a shit job, but I was beyond grateful at the time.
This episode features "Those Who Left History" written by Wanxiang Fengnian and translated by Stella Jiayue Zhu. Published in the March 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
self-harmviolencewar
From his exclusive residence, Zhou Xiaoliang’s diary: I know you will never read this, but I have to pretend I am writing for you. Or else what’s left to do? […]
deathsuicidewar
But I am no king, no man. It is a role I assumed in serving, with perfect order, those who scarcely saw fit to name me. Wild and shimmering, I hide from myself no longer. I was born twice from death. It is time to mend what was broken, even if they will not.
child-deathillness-and-pandemic
Abuelita has been feeding me her memories. Yesterday, it was the time she trudged up the mountain carrying a basketful of offerings for Pachamama (flowers, incense, a llama sculpted out of animal fat and adorned with gold leaf) in hopes the Earth Mother...
deathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
I beg you, let me tell you about my daughter. My brilliant daughter will be one of the four people who survive their airplane crashing into a giant. Or, more accurately, a giant swiping their airplane out of the sky. Perhaps it meant to catch, or caress....
death
April It is in the floral heaviness of late-spring that his mother comes home and hands him the present. It fits well in the palms of his hands, neither too heavy nor too light. Perfectly square, perhaps—and later confirmed to be exactly—five inches wide...
self-harmviolence
This episode features "You Are Invited to Our SPRING CELEBRATION" written by Thoraiya Dyer. Published in the March 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
In the last blush of autumn, the King of the Forest requested an audience with the King. The King was so delighted that he agreed at once. The audience was held in the King’s hall, the burnished tile laid in gold and green, the fire stoked high with ash...
Author : Matt Wallace Narrator : Mur Lafferty Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1000: A Thousand Names for God and Infinite Mustard is an Escape Pod original. Contains some harsh language A Thousand Names for God and Infinite...
Author : Risa Wolf Narrator : Julia Rios Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Tigers for Sale was first published in Clarkesworld Magazine in July 2023 Content warnings: colonialism, implied genocide, psychological manipulation Tigers for...
abusedeath
The Girl Who Came Before By David von Allmen When me and my family pulled into our driveway, my five best friends were waiting in our front yard, waving glittery poster-board signs that read “Welcome Home Sam!!!” and jumping around with full-on 13 year-old...
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Author : Albert Chu Narrator : Hugo Jackson Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “When the Oracle Speaks” was first published in Metaphororsis, July 2023 When the Oracle Speaks (Part 1) by Albert Chu One year after the war’s end, the royal...
war
Author : Albert Chu Narrator : Hugo Jackson Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “When the Oracle Speaks” was first published in Metaphororsis, July 2023 When the Oracle Speaks (Part 2) by Albert Chu Outside the warehouse, the rain fell in...
war
The Combat Pilot's Dictionary By Arden Baker Boot Rookie pilot. See also - nugget. You called us ‘boots’ when we turned up to the flight deck that first morning I laid eyes on you. The halogen lighting shone down onto the makeshift parade ground with a...
deathviolencewar
Author : J. R. Dewitt Narrator : Rebecca Wei Hsieh Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1012: Hot Bot Summer is an Escape Pod original. Contains depictions of war violence. Hot Bot Summer by J. R. Dewitt “God, these bots are...
goreviolencewar
Baron Quits The Payloaders By Renan Bernardo This story starts with a gig. Half a million people from all corners of the galaxy, hands in the air, heads banging to our vibrant noise. You probably saw the venue on some feed already. It’s the Amplitude, our...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onepregnancy-loss
Author : Natalia Theodoridou Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks When They Come Back was originally published in Crossed Genres (Issue 22), in October 2014, and in Escape Pod Episode 550 Frank though not explicit...
body-horrorsexual-contentviolence
Author : Deborah L. Davitt Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Reflected in Mirrored Skies” was published by Compelling Science Fiction (Special Kickstarter Companion issue Nov. 6, 2018) Reflected in Mirrored Skies...
death
Twilight By Lilly Harper Like the tide going out, the dream slipped between her toes and carried with it the smell of petrichor and the sound of birdsong. Even without knowing she was dreaming, she had known she was waking up; the subliminal chatter of her...
Author : Hiron Ennes Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 986: Lyra, From Many Angles is an Escape Pod original. Lyra, From Many Angles by Hiron Ennes When they came, it was in a craft the size of a golf...
Eros, Philia, Agape (Excerpt) By Rachel Swirsky The objects belonged to them both, but Adriana waved her hand bitterly when Lucian began packing. “Take whatever you want,” she said, snapping her book shut. She waited by the door, watching Lucian with sad...
child-abuse
"We are very, very disappointed.” It was her third try, and it still came out feebly. “We thought we made it super clear that any, any change in material, maker hand, machine, or method, however small or irrelevant it may seem, must be notified...
body-horrorchild-abuseself-harm
Author : C. H. Irons Narrator : Elie Hirschman Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 922: The Last Oracle of Atlantic City is an Escape Pod original. This episode is sponsored by The Theater of the Midnight Sun podcast:...
Author : David Marino Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 925: The Ballad of Starburst Smith is an Escape Pod original. Contains harsh language. The Ballad of Starburst Smith by David Marino “Did you read...
Author : Merrie Haskell Narrator : Amanda Ching Hosts : Valerie Valdes and Norm Sherman Audio Producers : Summer Brooks and Eric Valdes Originally published in Apex Magazine, February 2013, and was previously published in Escape Pod 404 (July 2013)....
The Library By N. B. Andersen Every morning at ten to ten, Dot powered on. Its hands lay flat against the thick glass of the reading room window, which let the photoreceptors on its palms feast on the sun. The window overlooked a modest lot where cars had...
Author : Renan Bernardo Narrator : Julia Rios Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story was originally published at Apex Magazine #134 in December 2022. The Walking Mirror of the Soul by Renan Bernardo My desire was written all over...
Summitting the Moon By Pragathi Bala T-7 days The moon Landed, the Rut appeared, home equity plummeted, jobs disappeared, and Ghis liked riding the moon. It was the last item on this tragic list that her wife couldn’t accept. It was the leaf that broke the...
pregnancy-loss
Author : E J Delaney Narrator : Eliza Chan Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 942: The Eye of Applethorpe is an Escape Pod original. The Eye of Applethorpe by E J Delaney Úna’s dad once said to her: “You never know what you’ve...
Sturdy Ladders and Lanterns By Malka Older As a freelance marine behavioral researcher most of Natalia’s jobs went something like this: She swam around in some large but controllable environment with a cephalopod, paying attention to its body language and...
Author : Samantha Henderson Narrator : Mur Lafferty Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Chandra’s Game” originally appeared in Lone Star Stories (2009), and in Escape Pod 373. Chandra’s Game by Samantha Henderson Joey Straphos, Papa Joe,...
body-horrordeathviolence
Author : Marissa Lingen Narrator : The Word Whore Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Originally appeared in Analog (2011), and in Escape Pod 366 (Oct 2012) Some of Them Closer by Marissa Lingen Coming back to Earth was not the immediate...
Author : Benjamin C. Kinney Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story originally appeared in the anthology “The Internet Is Where The Robots Live Now” (Paper Dog Press, November 2018). Elegy of Carbon by...
violence
Code Switching (Part 3 of 4) By Malon Edwards (...Continued from Part 2) [JEAN-MICHEL] A SWEET-ASS HELICOPTER AND TEN STATER STRANGERS? JEAN-MICHEL FEAT. THE NAUGHTY NINETY-DAY FANDANGO I'm feelin' this Bell 525 Relentless like Ellen Gilchrist playin' bid...
racismviolencewar
Author : Cat Rambo Narrator : Tina Connolly Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Red in Tooth and Cog” originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 2016, and was previously published in Escape Pod 607 Red in Tooth and...
Author : Grace Chan Narrator : Andrew K. Hoe Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars was originally published in Clarkesworld Issue 178 (July 2021) He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars by...
A Cosmonaut's Guide to Talking to Your Parents By Adriana C. Grigore You have (3) unopened voicemails on your personal line. Last received 31 minutes ago, Aurea Minor Time. > Read? > No. Switch to broadcast. > Engage deep space satellite? > Yes. On, say…a...
illness-and-pandemic
Hey, George By Elizabeth Guilt "Hey, George." I remind myself that that is not my name; it never was. I will myself not to react, not to break stride, as I stroll along beside the beach. Old habits die hard, and the best neuro-reset in the world can't...
Author : Linda Niehoff Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 883: Just Us and the Mannequins is an Escape Pod original. Brief mention of suicidal ideations Just Us and the Mannequins by Linda Niehoff It was...
suicide
Zhao and the Flightless Crane By A. J. Mo Quick sapphires danced over sun-silvered water. Soundless, they zipped and wheeled to the quiet rhythm of filtration pumps. Dragonflies, Zhao thought. Other winged jewels joined the flurry, some green as spring,...
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
If My Body Is a Temple, Raze It to the Ground By Lauren Ring Thea helped me with my upload today. Decent response speed. Props to whoever designed her—so realistic! — anonymous customer review for Acheron Uploads, four out of five stars I know, I know....
abusemisogynyslavery
Author : Amal Singh Narrator : Kaushik Narasimhan Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “A Series of Endings” originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (December 2021) A Series of Endings by Amal Singh This is the story of Roopchand...
death
A Gentlemen's Agreement By Aimee Ogden Heroes are such fragile things. Sphinx takes in the scene from a distance, first, as is his custom. He makes a wide orbit around the pillars of smoke and the pathetic caution-tape bandages. The first responders are...
goreviolence
Author : Jei D. Marcade Narrator : Amanda Ching Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Sounding the Fall” is an Escape Pod Original, first published in July 2015. Sounding the Fall by Jei D. Marcade Sometimes, Narae can almost convince...
A Layer Thin As Breath By T. K. Rex “Valley. Can you still hear me?” Julian’s voice filtered through her dying radio. The Prince of Cats was a speck of light, dimming through the gold-grey film that, atom by atom, was devouring her helmet. Valley tried to...
body-horror
Author : Heather Kamins Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 910: Tuesday, June 13, at the South Valley Time Loop Support Group is an Escape Pod original. Tuesday, June 13, at the South Valley Time Loop...
suicideviolence
Author : Grace Chan Narrator : Rebecca Wei Hsieh Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Death By Water” originally appeared in From the Waste Land (PS Publishing, Oct 2022). It was shortlisted for the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction...
body-horrordeath
Author : Phoenix Alexander Narrator : Nicola Chapman Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 832: Mouthfeel is an Escape Pod original. Mouthfeel by Phoenix Alexander 2050 After she left him, he found cells of hers...
Author : Renan Bernardo Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in World Science Fiction #2: Reloading the Future (July 2021) Anticipation of Hollowness by Renan Bernardo Having...
Deepo 12 By Jeff Hewitt Nothing made Deepo 12 feel more alive than doing its job. Its actuators sighed as another cassette slid from its workstation, tinted blastic masking the rainbow sheen of the wafers inside. Dim strip lights curved over the protective...
violence
Dandelion By John Shade Before the border wall, we scatter. Dandelions. The nanomachines grind us down and we float up and through the cracks, molecule to molecule, like holding hands. Leena hesitates, is left behind. She stands apart on the wrong side of...
deathgoreviolence
The Pieces that Bind By Carol Scheina The first thing Georgia knew for certain was that the woman rummaging through the canned beans and peas in the pantry was not her grandma, even though she looked exactly like her, right down to the nasty black cigar in...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Author : Amal Singh Narrator : Kaushik Narasimhan Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “A Home For Mrs. Biswas” previously appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (April 2021) A Home For Mrs. Biswas by Amal Singh Once she saw the red sands stretch...
death-of-a-loved-one
Author : Adriana Kantcheva Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 857: Salvaged is an Escape Pod original. Salvaged by Adriana Kantcheva I have her body. If I’d also had her life, would I have lived it in the same way? I make the...
Author : Aimee Picchi Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived” was previously published in the Zombies Need Brains anthology “Apocalyptic” in June 2020 Solo Cooking for the Recently...
abusebody-horrorviolence
Author : Renan Bernardo Narrator : Diogo Ramos Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 863: A Shoreline of Oil and Infinity is an Escape Pod original. A Shoreline of Oil and Infinity by Renan Bernardo Conchinha Charging… 87% Energy...
"She is light. Until she is not, and the lighthouse goes dark as the waves crash against the cliffside, the rocks at its foot jutting and jagged, a peril to even the most skilled navigators’ ships. “Fuck me,” I swear at the sudden black spot in my vision....
deathsexual-content
Balancing the Equation by Justin C. Key June 18, 2031 Lauren led her two-year-old son, Sean, slowly to their car while carrying three full bags of groceries. "Up," Sean said, showing her his palms. "Up, Mama, up!" "Ask one more time and you're getting a...
child-deathdeathracism
The Call of the Sky By Cliff Winnig The army hospital’s underground floors reminded me of Pluto Base, a place I’d never actually been. I’d never even been off-world, but I remembered those claustrophobic beige corridors. Two years before, I’d synced with a...
body-horrordeathwar
Electronic Ghosts By Innocent Chizaram Ilo I If Nneora had died two weeks earlier, her daughter, Anaeto, would not have resurrected her ghost. That was the night Nneora ran a fever, laid convulsing in bed, a slimy froth trickling from the corners of her...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Author : Catherine George Narrator : Abra Staffin-Wiebe Host : Benjamin C. Kinney Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (December 2019). Annotated Setlist of the Mikaela Cole Jazz Quintet...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Author : Jennifer Lee Rossman Narrator : Ellora Sen-Gupta Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 786: The Steel Magnolia Metaphor is an Escape Pod original. Contains mentions of cancer and death. The Steel Magnolia...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Author : Jaxton Kimble Narrator : Mat Weller Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 788: Broken (Flashback Friday) is an Escape Pod original. Contains a couple intimate moments. Broken by Jaxton Kimble My favorite...
mental-illnesssexual-content
Author : Sameem Siddiqui Narrator : Arun Jiwa Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums AirBody first appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (April 2020), and was the Winner of the 2020 Clarkesworld Readers Poll Contains some harsh...
sexual-content
Hard Mother, Spider Mother, Soft Mother By Hal Y. Zhang “Did you see the report on the spy from Aberdeen? The game is a-foot.” I mumbled something like “No, sounds interesting.” All I remember is my usual annoyance at her ability to pronounce hyphens where...
mental-illness
Author : Christopher Mark Rose Narrator : Tad Callin Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums “Sentient Being Blues” first appeared in the March/April 2021 issue of Asimov’s Death of a child, also contains some violence and...
child-deathgoreviolence
Author : Anjali Patel Narrator : Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali Host : Brent Lambert Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 806: Bright Lights Flying Beneath the Ocean is an Escape Pod original. Contains harsh language. Bright Lights Flying...
Author : Erik Grove Narrator : Karlo Yeager Rodriguez Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 816: Merely Players is an Escape Pod original. Death and loss. Merely Players by Erik Grove Jester stopped his bicycle in...
"Cassie pulls her hood low over her forehead, keeps her eyes on the ground ahead of her. She wears face paint meant to fool facial recognition algorithms, though the cops think she’s dead. Her friends are. She should be. She circles the block twice,...
self-harmtransphobiaviolence
Where They Keep Their Promises By B. Pladek I imagine you eating the chocolate bar. It will arrive tomorrow, I hope, though the war has disrupted the medrunners’ routes between Chicago and London. It will arrive, though. I promise. I imagine you unwrapping...
deathillness-and-pandemicwar
In-Body by Vincent H. O’Neil “You’re not supposed to be doing this, Colonel.” Dentzler kept his eyes on the low table and pretended he hadn’t heard. “You said her In-Body chip was damaged?” “When the grenade went off.” Ensign Teel pointed at a spot under...
deathviolence
The Sun From Both Sides (Part 2 of 3) By R.S.A. Garcia (Continued from Part 1 - Escape Pod episode 757) Once, a man left his home to find his home. It was not an easy journey, but going home never is. He gave up all that he was, and all he knew, to...
deathviolence
Give the Family My Love by A. T. Greenblatt I’m beginning to regret my life choices, Saul. Also, hello from the edge of the galaxy. Also, surprise! I know this isn’t what you had in mind when you said “Keep in touch, Hazel” but this planet doesn’t exactly...
pregnancy-loss
No Spaceship Go By Annie Bellet The boys lay on their backs side by side staring up through the open roof of the abandoned building. Dylan clutched Meek's hand in anticipation as the ground shook and a roar filled the air. Tiny pebbles danced up from the...
Author : Frank Wu Narrator : Roderick Aust Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story originally appeared in Analog Magazine in November 2016. It won the AnLab Award for short story. In the Absence of Instructions to...
animal-harmdeathwar
Vlad’s an immortal vampire and his girlfriend Eliza stays in suspended animation most of the time while they travel the stars looking for a planet where they can be happy together.
Following the death of her mother, Fiona buys a new house in order to start a new chapter of her life, one with fewer reminders of painful memories. Unbeknownst to Fiona, this house has a melancholy history, and slightly more ghosts than she anticipated....
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Cyd’s suicide brings his friend Kelvin to Albany for his memorial.
body-horrorsuicidetransphobia
A scientist mourns the failure of scientists to anticipate the consequences of making contact with an alien race.
child-deathdeathillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.