Tabitha has been walking a long time, trying to wear out seven pairs of iron shoes; Amira has been sitting alone on a glass hill that suitors try to climb.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Speculative Fiction
514 free-to-read stories tagged “Speculative Fiction”
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.
Content warnings 3
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...
Content warnings 6
abusedeathmental-illnesspregnancy-losssexual-violencesuicide
Sam’s ability is modest, but he’s still excited to be accepted into the Super Team. Now he just has to figure out how he can make the biggest difference—assuming he can do more good than harm.
Content warnings 1
violence
"This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. The first time you get our message, you only / find one thread. It mimics your language in / its simplest form, a single strand of words / laid end to end. You will have to...
Content warnings 1
death
"During one of the much smaller disasters that preceded the really big disaster, I met a lot of my neighbors online. I can’t remember if we set up the WhatsApp group because of the pandemic or the civil disorder or both. My Minneapolis block had always...
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
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.
Content warnings 3
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.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
In a world desperate for wood for fires and paper, a man and his brother look for a tree good enough to make a world-class violin.
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicviolence
Entertaining tale of a modern search engine that achieves real artificial intelligence by accident and decides it wants to be helpful to people.
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssubstance-use
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.
Teenage Tetley lives in a human settlement (one of the last) built on a miles-wide floating garbage dump. She explains why everyone hates her now.
Content warnings 4
deathsexual-violencesubstance-useviolence
"My country may seem strange to you. There are times when it seems strange to me. I wake and work. I work then rest. And in between I say things, and I don’t say things. Because, as you’ll learn, in my country, what you say is important. But what you don’t...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"I’ve ferried two hundred and twenty-one souls across the river of death, and I can already tell my two-hundred-and-twenty-second is going to be a real shitkicker. I know by the lightness of the manila folder in my hand, the preemptive pity in the...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
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.
Content warnings 4
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneself-harmsuicide
Despite not being a telepath, Calla worked out a way to play chess with her captor, Major Larn, during the recent war. Now they're going to finish their game.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesswar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
Madeline is having an adverse reaction to an experimental drug--she revisits episodes in her past.
"When her bell sounded at midnight, Firion the wizard grasped her stoutest staff (crowned, for non-magical reasons, with a razor-sharp chunk of amethyst) and put her lips to the doorjamb. “Who goes there?” Nothing but the slap of rain against stone, like...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
racismviolencewar
"The form is one page long. No back. Just a front. It should be longer. There are six copies of the form, all different colors. Like I’m working my way through the rainbow to the end where I’ll finally find peace. Red. A parent or guardian. I meet my...
Content warnings 3
abuseillness-and-pandemictransphobia
When you were eight, the haunted house changed your life. Twenty years later, you’re determined to study it, but it’s determined to change your life again.
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Mika is lost at sea, but lost in time, not space, landing at her home port over and over at different times spread across almost two thousand years as she tries to get home to her children.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Selemei’s push for a law to allow women to stop having children when it risks their health upends the complex caste-based society she lives in.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Jamie’s a non-binary teenager in a small town, but they remember at least a dozen past lives, one of which relates to a forty-year-old murder.
Content warnings 1
violence
"Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it. Samantha Finnes was a minor...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Approaching 50, Mabel decides to become a glass bottle dancer. She tries to hide it from her family, but the local cockroaches notice it for sure when she gathers up their bottles, and they’ve got dreams too.
Sister Nadine sits in her cell at the church and offers wisdom to any of the townspeople who come by. But she’s starting to see things that suggest the world isn’t quite what it seems to be.
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,...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"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...
Content warnings 2
abusechild-abuse
"In the beginning of me, I was a bird. A magpie, although I’ve since been a jay and a red-tailed hawk and even a big, black crow, crying tok-tok-tok at every passerby. But the magpie was special: on my first day, I saw those flashing blue wingtips, and I...
Content warnings 1
death
"In the cloud forests of Paek Sigma II, the inhabitants do not keep time, but stretch and slice it. The first humans who arrived on the planet were amazed by the fauna. There’s the stone-armored petradrakon, draped in twenty thousand scales each a meter...
Content warnings 2
violencewar
"Things began to go badly for the crew of the USFS Erwin around the time Dr. Marchere’s coffee mug spontaneously reassembled itself. Dr. Louis Marchere was not, at that moment, conducting some manner of experiment. Well, he was, only not on entropy and the...
Content warnings 1
death
In a sad, future Sri Lanka, the narrator watches his/her city die from the effects of sea-level rise and abandonment.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
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.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
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...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"Can someone get the doors? Thanks. Please remember we’re on an honor system for chairs—if you’ve eaten today, please leave them for someone who hasn’t. We don’t need another fainting incident. First of all, if you’re looking for a technical look at...
"I was finishing the last of my nightly coffee when the nineteen-seventies twins approached my table and asked me to bear witness to their disappearance. This was not an unusual request at Cafe Liminalité, being the locale of patrons that dreamed too much...
Content warnings 1
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsubstance-useviolence
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?
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
Bilqis, the only real doctor in a dying community of religious exiles, finds something strange when she examines a pregnant woman.
Content warnings 1
pregnancy-loss
Donna’s cold and distant husband has an industrial accident the day she planned to leave him, so she stays to nurse him back to health. After that, he’s different—in ways she likes.
Content warnings 2
abusechild-abuse
Around 2650 AD, the narrator interviews a wealthy recluse who lives above the sunken ruins of Boston.
Raised by her grandmothers, Aviya thinks about her future, and thinks about trying to find the source of a magical scrap of "cloth of the wind."
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Fundamentalist mom takes networking drug so she can track down her missing teenage boy.
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusesubstance-use
"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...
Content warnings 2
abusesexual-violence
"Do you remember being born? I expect that you do. After all, it happened only a very few minutes ago. Sensation comes first. Perhaps it was my voice you noticed—a ragged voice, new-carved. These are your first sounds. Sandpaper words, and the even temper...
Content warnings 1
death
To celebrate her grandmother, all the captain of the Sopinha de Feijão wanted was to build a street market on a distant moon. But now the captain is dead and…
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Steve, over here! Turn to your right. Can we get a smile?” He falls back on his training easily enough, turns to the cameras, gives them his famous crooked smile, tilts his head just so as the flashes go off so they can capture the smoulder that...
There is a woman, and she is a man’s wife. Please give her name. Call her whatever you’d like.
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorviolence
"This is the eighth floor of the Al-Ahli Memorial Library, my favorite place in the building. When the elevator door opens, it’s like walking into a quiet circle of glass. So, as we walk, I’m going to whisper. People are reading, writing, drawing—it’s such...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathwar
"The aquarium is different every time I die. Exhibits reshuffling like a deck of cards. The blood loss, though, that’s reliable. Death ninety-three was the jellyfish room: all those ghost bodies and moonsilk, limned radiant in the blacklight, jetting about...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
"Not all the ghosts of Chornobyl died in 1986. Some died years—decades—later, bodies ravaged by mutated cells. They were a hundred kilometers away, not realizing their favorite mug was doused with irradiated atoms from the destroyed reactor. I died in...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onewar
"Fejértorony There’s dysphoria, and then there’s turning into a mid-size city. But sometimes you try male, you try female, you try different kinds of nonbinary and it only makes you realize that something still doesn’t quite fit, something fundamental....
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
"A man who will be given a second name in ten thousand years and a man whose name will be forgotten sit in a forest, or perhaps a grassy plain, or perhaps a cold tundra. It is a biome that will not exist in ten thousand years but whose footprint will be...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssuicide
It’s just business as usual at the Bureau of Metahuman, Mutant, and Occult Affairs until an employee for the government agency begins to wonder if work is following her home…
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…
"Modern bodies are made in large quantities. Factories line the edge of the Fissure Basin. Workers scoop sand and mud into large churning vats, feeding extruders that empty into molds in the standard shapes. Factory supervisors smooth out imperfections and...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Who is the most beloved person alive? Is it one of those actors who plays superheroes? Is it a political leader? Maybe you’re a galaxy brain and say Beyoncé? No matter who you pick, you know you’re wrong. There’s always that better person who we love so...
Content warnings 2
self-harmviolence
"I didn’t expect the trailer to feel so small and that some of the blood would still be wet. But I must have expected some blood because I cuffed my jeans before going in. And I didn’t expect the cats would have come back—a window was open, its screen...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Jinah stands in her old underwear and scrapes the future from women’s skin. Their scales fall to the floor. The women sit up scoured red and smooth. The scales are impossible to see unless you’ve learned how to look, but impossible to miss once you’ve...
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.
Content warnings 1
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneracismviolence
"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...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Good art changes you. And that was the point, right? That’s what the social media ad that caught my attention wanted me to believe: Our Shoes: You couldn’t understand our struggle... Until now. I had read the line over and over again during a rare...
Content warnings 1
racism
For the residents of this mycological ecosystem, creating art feeds the World around you and requires working in harmony with your inner voice. When one artist’s voice begins screaming, he’s forced to travel farther than he ever has before to reconcile...
A generation ship arrives at its target planet only to discover a civilization has arisen in the centuries since it was launched. The captain sends the navigator out to explore the planet and see if there’s a place for them there.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
When the Demon of the North takes her father, young Claudette teams up with a university professor to hunt it down and kill it.
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.
Since her cancer, Sydney has just been drifting through life, but when she lets a friend move in, things change in an unexpected way.
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
The last living human being lives with her aunts, who are all incarnations of the last survivors of various extinct species.
Content warnings 1
death
A group of women have been chemically altered to set cities on fire from a distance. Not everyone thinks this is a good idea—including the women themselves.
Content warnings 4
child-deathdeathillness-and-pandemicviolence
"I heard you’re returning to our world again. What do you want here exactly, Orhija? The Earth is dying slowly. It’s losing its sheen and glow. The blackness of the soil that you used to say was as beautiful as mine has changed since you left. It’s redder...
"We put my body double together in June Lee’s basement. Her mom was one of those chill Asian moms who liked having an artsy-fartsy daughter she could brag about at Bible study. She was already pushing the whole portfolio-for-college-apps deal, so she...
"They cut off Auréle’s head and they put it on a pike above the city’s third best bridge. To me, that seemed a shame. I had only just got his nose right. It had a crook in it, Auréle’s nose. A sporting accident, from his days at the Academy. He’d been...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Dear Dr. Erzsébet Krajcsik-Nagy, I am contacting you as a member of the general public, and not as a fellow scholar, though I must say my chosen field of art history does have certain similarities to yours. I read the interview with you in the online...
"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...
Content warnings 1
sexual-violence
As a young scholar sets out on a research project to find the stones where the settlers of Iceland made human sacrifices, a long dormant volcano rouses…and other, long-sleeping horrors might also be stirring.
"The oldest members of the asamblea all agree that the idea for El Zopilote came out of the Plantation in Texas, back when it was still one more state in the old US. The Plantation is what they called the Sysco-Bush Memorial Carceral Center and it had...
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
"On the high plains of Kansas in a tiny town worn down by drought, I stop at a roadside diner. When I ask for water, the waitress pours me a glass of ice water, presenting it with obvious pride. “We have our own well,” she says. “And the wind turbine on...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Don’t start with the birth certificate. No, take an obituary-out approach. Pick an age, a date, what to do in lieu of flowers. Yes, she must die. I know how hard it is to kill her, but the spell won’t work without it, for every story ends in death. We set...
An engineer who frequently travels for her job, suddenly finds herself in airports other than the one she arrived in…
"We drove out to Joshua Tree for the star party—a gathering of amateur astronomers under a clear, dark sky. It was Holly’s idea, an impromptu adventure on a Friday after work: “Hey, Lou, do you want to go look at the moon tonight?” Holly had the best ideas...
Content warnings 2
child-deathviolence
"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...
"Never forget you are their monster. That’s the first rule we tell you, crammed between us in the back of Paola’s dad’s vintage ’22 Dodge Challenger, his project car he lets her borrow, with slick wheels and faux-leather seats that make our Sangrona noses...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
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...
Content warnings 3
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...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"The country was at just over ten thousand deaths the morning that the door appeared. On Kosmo’s phone NPR was interviewing a doctor with a nasal voice about the need for social distancing, while Kosmo himself collected empty cans from around his home office."
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"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...
"I’m licking mala algae off a thin yellow and blue P sheet that says Nutterfinger when I notice the walls in my home are vibrating. Nothing ever happens in our world surrounded by P. P is what we call the material that makes up our world, and it’s what we...
"I did not want to write a report for this book, but Lady Koi-Koi convinced me to, even though she says it “does a disservice to our own stories.”1 I also have to pass my WAEC, and this book is on our reading list for the mock exam, so, fine. I will...
"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,...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"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...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"I find Aleda’s scale, sticky with ichor, tucked between the tentacles of our pink anemone bed. I tweeze it out from the undulating appendages with my thumb and index finger and flounder against my escalating heart rate. Aleda’s swishing back and forth,...
"Patricia could hear them gathered on her front porch, the kings and popes and saints, gossiping and chattering and generally having a good time. She turned. King Solomon lay sprawled across the bed like it was his golden throne. He raised his head to...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"This much was clear. At some point in my future, I would have access to a time machine. This was a ridiculous sentence and a tragically irrelevant concern while my wife Judi was on the floor and possibly dying, but there it was: nonsense, in the presence...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"Time is absolute. My son is born and there is blood, screaming sweet as rain, tears, and joy. I hold him. Things precede. Time is a straight line that exists independent of observers. My son’s second birthday follows his first. He walks shortly after his...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"Monday’s lover tugs at Jan’s ribbon with his teeth. Jan doesn’t yell at the lover to stop. The guy just received bad news from the front—a friend lost to a bomb, perhaps, a sibling blown to bits; Jan doesn’t ask. He tells the lover, instead, to be...
Content warnings 1
war
"I’m pretty sure I’m photosynthesizing. That’s what I mean when I say this year made me a real plant lady. I promise this isn’t another weird quarantine derangement thing, like losing track of time or holding conversations with taxidermy. I still need to...
Author : Kel Coleman Narrator : Hollis Monroe Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Delete Your First Memory for Free was originally published in FIYAH Magazine Issue 17 (January 2021). Delete Your First Memory for Free by...
"When Golem opened her eyes for the first time, she saw Magda. “You are Golem,” Magda whispered, her oil-stained fingers prodding Golem’s metal joints. “Golem,” the machine repeated, the rust along the two half-tin cans forming her jaw chipping onto...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
"The truth is that I lost my arm the same summer I lost my brother. Lost is a euphemism. In fact, my arm was retrieved by the paramedics and brought to the hospital, along with the two fingers severed from my left hand, and the various parts of my...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"What do you mean, Why didn’t I warn them before? Are you serious? I did! Answer me this if you are so smart. If you had seen it, what would you have done? It all began with a scrap of fabric I used to test the machine’s tension. Over and over and over,...
Content warnings 1
death
"I called it "yearning" at first, but by the time word had spread to all twenty-two of us croppers, a divide had resulted: half called it firesouling, and half called it firesailing."
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
Babysitting/bodyguarding a group of rich kids should be easy money, especially for a tough joker-ace like Khan—provided he doesn’t end up killing them himself.
Content warnings 1
violence
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.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
A child struggles with the loss of his big brother and his feelings that maybe things are better without him—and maybe he’s not really gone.
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
The 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.
Content warnings 2
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.
Content warnings 1
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorracismviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
As Charlotte’s husband sinks into early Alzheimer’s, he becomes more and more obsessed with a cult religious figure known only as The Reverend.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Val leads an almost solitary life keeping the lighthouse at an inland lake. A man needing help with his magic interrupts her routine and brings unwelcome reminders of the life she lost.
In which grown up Gerda and Kay from “The Snow Queen” get separated, and she goes after him again, finding that much has changed and yet a lot is just the same.
Content warnings 3
misogynysexual-violenceviolence
In which we learn how bad translations averted a war and led to lasting peace.
Content warnings 2
misogynywar
Chenra is a gunner for a Mad Max-like cluster of fighters in a world devastated by climate change. She’s surprised when strangers come looking for her. Strangers driving equipment that looks like it was made recently—not decades ago.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
In a storm, in an alternate 1890s South Pacific, their airship crashes on a Pacific Island occupied by surprisingly high-tech natives.
Adriana’s going to be all alone when her best friend moves away, she’s bracing herself to be all alone, and she’s starting to have strange dreams that affect the real world.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
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?
The two-tongued Jeremy app helps lots of kids with their schoolwork, but Jeremy thinks it’s asking too much of him, and he’s afraid to try to turn it off.
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusesuicide
Summer of 1955, the last summer of high school. Mike remembers his girlfriend and how wonderful it was being in love. And he remembers the awful things that happened at the end.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
The government wants to build affordable housing for the homeless, but it wants them to agree to quit using magic first.
After the government rules he isn't really human, Chris loses his human wife and hybrid kids.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
The narrator wants to spend the last hours before the asteroid strike with her parents, but she runs out of gas in the middle of South Dakota.
In 1912 Cairo, the police investigate the apparent murder of an immortal Djinn.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
On the edge of the ruined land, village people worship Orcas as gods. Unbeliever Kelb is up to something, and Adze tries to help him because she loves him.
Content warnings 3
animal-harmdeathviolence
Electricity does strange things around Arthur, especially when he gets excited. He's excited about Christina, so their first date is going to be a real adventure.
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
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.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In his old age, a TV writer reflects on a show he worked on fifty years ago--the only work he's really proud of--and the almost supernatural way it came to an end.
Content warnings 2
abusesubstance-use
Zhou is an ad man for a Chinese marketing firm, and he has to find a way to get people to buy a new photo technology that has unusual capabilities.
A woman paramedic and her best friend fear that despite their best efforts, they end up causing more pain than they relieve.
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
All the imaginary creatures a young person could want to make apartment life more pleasant.
From childhood, Flora, painted disturbing paintings, and her nurse fears the young lady carried this obsession into adulthood.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"Dear Francesca, First off: I know that’s not your name. I haven’t gone and mistaken you for another woman—one of my many conquests, I imagine you imagine (what must imaginary you think of imaginary me?). You’ll notice, if you glance ahead, that I’ve...
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
"Before you hear what I’m about to tell you, I need you to understand two things. Firstly, I do not know how to swim. When you live in the place I do, it’s more or less a useless skill. I mean, the deepest water around is up to my shoulders at best, can...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgore
A transnational adoptee is haunted by the ghost of his birth mother. Content warnings: Self-harm, suicidal ideation Copyright © 2025 khōréō magazine. Story by Woody Dismukes, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition read by Sam Cavalcanti, with...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreself-harm
"You ever love a place more than people? Mama Patch’s house held me and all my running and snooping without ever forcing me to slow down or stay put. I could run from the rafters down the bang-bang spiral case, then sideways through the six rooms of...
Content warnings 3
homophobiasexual-violenceviolence
Following a mysterious world-wide event that makes ghosts visible, a young woman is invited to attend Ghost Camp.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"The buffet was infinite. It existed in a pocket dimension, via some sort of technological jiggering of the sort that you have heard about before and, unless you are totally anal, don’t want to hear about now. You could probably summon an explanation that...
Content warnings 3
cannibalismgoreviolence
"I learned from Bernadette that there are two ways a star can go supernova. The first is in a double star where one partner dies first, turning into a white dwarf, and the surviving partner swells in grief and dumps mass onto the compact star. But the...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
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...
A woman talented in the art of spinning–creating pottery by manipulating clay in her mouth–longs to become the best, but wonders if it is worth the sacrifices she must make…
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-oneself-harm
"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...
"The woman’s name was lost in The Fall, as was so much else we once thought vital—seasons, rivers, uncharred air—but her image persists, has become indelible. The giant wall of white upon which her travesties are projected once yearly has become a mecca...
Content warnings 3
goresexual-contentviolence
"Tyler Moore’s spells strive to exist in and of themselves. They make no excuse or justification for their existence: no promise to speak to the dead, predict next year’s grain or gold prices, or read the mind of lawyers during a hostile takeover. They are...
"Salty swell over my head, tugging me back, the raw and tender creases of my elbows against the forearms they're linked with. Brine up my nose, in my mouth. The anchor of my feet in the sand holds me fast with the rest. The water recedes and we breathe, a...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathsuicide
"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...
Content warnings 3
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,...
"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,...
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
"Posit a man. He could be any man. She could be a woman. They could be any human being anywhere on the spectrum. The story would play out the same. This is, however, entirely the creation of a writer who has written plenty of formidable women, and so he...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"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...
"Welcome, Stranger! This is a story for you, you who wait for my words to fall into your ear, so that we can share being and become more than we are alone. The tales I have to tell today are woven into this fabric that unrolls before you as I work my Loom....
Content warnings 3
child-deathracismsexual-violence
"It’s my twelfth birthday and we’re all waiting for Wormwood and everyone is here and I mean everyone. Me and Mom and Dad and Big Pa which is my grandpa who was the strong man at one of the last traveling carnivals in America, and Bigfoot of course, and a...
"A whale soars over Brooklyn. Clouds spread in streaks over the pale blue sky like cold butter. And the whale cleaves right through. Dar spots it from his perch on the rooftop, smoking a contraband cigarette. At first, it looks like the whale is just...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorgore
"The world-organism is awake and has spent the last decade playing round after round of tic-tac-toe with itself. Hearing this the first time, Anais reacts like anyone would to a stranger sitting next to them on a plane, insisting on conversation for the...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssubstance-use
"It’s only after they’ve loaded the moving truck halfway with boxes that the parents finally notice Parker’s gone. They spend three days yelling for him. Mom waits the longest, wanders the farthest into the forest in the dark. Her voice is a plea, an...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Wait, stop. Pause. Don’t move. Please. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Just…don’t touch anything. The remote, your phone, your always-listening voice-activated digital assistant designed to make modern life a breeze. Accept my cookies. Agree to...
"Who loves you?” I ask. My daughter looks away. Doesn’t answer. I lean down and turn her to face me, resting my thumb in the dimple in her chin. It’s the same dimple her mother has. Or had. “You love me, Daddy.” “That’s right, so please listen closely,” I...
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeathviolence
"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...
"The Whole Foods where Justin works is a block from the beach, close enough to smell it. Apart from the rusting cars in the parking lot and the blood-spattered branches on the Eucalypts, the store looks much the same as it always did. Justin can do his job...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorcannibalismgore
A man is offered the opportunity to partake in an exclusive, subscription-based eating club for those who wish to dine on human flesh. But he may have bitten off a little more than he can chew.
Content warnings 3
cannibalismgoreviolence
"She tells the children to call her Kade Makasi, and if this was one of her stories, she’d describe herself as bent and wrinkled and spider-like for a touch of myth and poetry … but she’s none of these things … she’s tall, thick-browed, with two braided...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
"It forced itself to take that last step onto the ferry. Every step further from land felt like falling. Through space, through time, through every place it had ever been. It kept its eyes open, its features arranged in what it hoped was a neutral...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
racism
"Folks later claimed she was acting strange from the moment she boarded the plane. They described her as skittish, curt, radiating an aura of danger. Some, when confronted with the security footage, which showed her to have behaved rather unremarkably up...
Content warnings 3
child-deathgoreviolence
"The cadaver drone makes an incision along the inside of each finger. My stomach curls, waiting for the blood, but of course there’s none left. The body has been dead for days, all the blood drained and replaced with a sweet-smelling formaldehyde formula....
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"THE HOUSE SOARED NORTH, then veered west, where the land went up and up, and the buildings went up and up, like a metallic wave cresting ahead of the distant mountains. The house could see the prairies from where it crouched but could not see the thing it...
"Dear Senator: I am writing with concern about the recent legislative decision (SB-AR-15) to place monsters outside our schools. As a lifelong resident of Arkansas and these United States, I certainly understand the need to protect our children from active...
A weary resilience worker should know better than anyone: no one is safe when the world is always ending…
Content warnings 1
death
"Somewhere between the black slopes and the longest stretch of the cratered plains, I came across a traveler who I thought might be leaving the city and headed for the nested forests. I greeted him from a distance, just as the road curved around a copse of...
When the waters rose, the people who stayed on the River learned they weathered the storms best together, but what happens when one of their own becomes curious about the Land?
"War meant a new life for refrigeration unit B3RT4A—or Bertha, as her now-dead family liked to call her, before they’d been buried in the rubble of their kitchen. It meant she had to listen to the bomber-planes flying overhead day and night, had to hide in...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onewar
"and in a strip mall parking lot off a side road in some Baltimore suburb my hand is trembling as I take the last of the voidwater in its little bootleg dropper and I peel my eyelid back and though I am so careful and try so hard a bit of the precious...
Content warnings 3
self-harmsubstance-usesuicide
"Latent summer stirred while spring lay dormant. April had come to the Kingdom of S’ong and brought with it spells of rain. Tadpoles in the pond recently developed hind legs; above, a stray shower had been drumming at the water pit-a-pat. The rain-rinsed...
Content warnings 2
deathwar
"Hi, we were both in Central Square on Friday, around 9:30 PM. I’m a tall trans lady with brown hair and glasses. You were standing in front of Sonia with some people. You were looking at your phone and then you looked up at me. Our eyes met for—I’m sorry,...
"Everything the sea takes, it gives back in its own way and its own time. That was what Jess’s grandmother believed, what she’d told Jess as they stood in the shadow of the giant red cedar that had washed ashore, its severed roots thicker than Jess’s body....
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Chelle’s friend, Wenqian, has everything Chelle doesn’t. A slim figure, pale skin, and most notably the affection of her longtime friend Preston. Like the ocean waves she calls home, Chelle feels transparent and overflowing all at once. So when she’s given...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"You remember when those rappers robbed a bank and killed a cop, that summer the girls from Wing turned green? I didn’t think it was connected then—the robbery, the gold, and the hordes of teens who were rotting from the inside. But I know better now."
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"I have heard the humans say that sex is the most intimate act of which they are capable, and though I did not say so to their faces, I felt great sorrow for them. Demendrenna’s tail twines twice around my torso, above and below the point where my scales...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
An artist’s work attracts the eye of Andrey Porgee, a notorious gangster, who becomes her best customer. But when he commissions a painting based on a childhood photograph, the artist fears his reaction to the final product.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"The Exhibit of You is the central attraction of an institution you could call a museum, in a population center you could call a city, beloved by creatures who you could call people. We know that this is annoying sentence structure. If you cannot penetrate...
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
"It’s the day when the last war is over, and skeletons of swallows are already starting to return. They don’t have beaks, and their white, hard-boiled eyes fly three inches ahead of their semi-transparent faces, or sometimes on their side. Skeletons of...
Content warnings 2
deathwar
A reporter travels to the Norwegian Arctic to cover an unusual sled race with the undead leading the living into unknown territory.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"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...
Content warnings 1
death
"None of them can see what lies behind the tree line. They finger the oak trunks, white hands racing down the bark’s craggy, deep grooves. There is no blood on the leaves. As morning sun peeks through heavy branches, a light breeze masks the ashy bite of...
Content warnings 3
child-deathsexual-violencesuicide
"Marcus was meant to be going to the moon today. Years of training, years of anticipation. I can’t imagine the letdown. Instead, he’s in the community garden, as usual, weeding. Marcus hates weeding. He’d rather prune the fruit trees or tie up the bean...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"You are the unalive thing possessing her body. Her body was printed three days ago from blueprints transferred moments before the motorbike crash over the bridge. Her flesh and fat and keratin and bone are accurate to prior specifications, except for the...
"Matt tells the waiter he’ll have his eggs over easy. They come back scrambled, a neat glistening pile framed by perfect triangles of toast, a lacy froth of hashbrowns lurking across the plate. He doesn’t notice he’s chosen to move until he’s already...
Content warnings 1
suicide
"It was 10 a.m., and Anmar clapped his hands to silence the screeching wake-up alarm he had set for himself. He didn’t actually need the alarm, since he had already been awake for twelve minutes before it went off, but Anmar enjoyed using technology...
"Ti came to see me, you know. Three four days before she died. Knocked right on my door, and I’ve never been so surprised in all my life. This is a woman who when we were on tour would have the driver drive her halfway down the block rather than walk to...
Content warnings 1
death
"I have experienced some tastes of my afterlife as a crustacean. In it, I am one of many, on a beach with purple sand abutting a sea that could be water but might be some other liquid entirely, beneath stars that seem larger and brighter than any I see in...
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
Haunted by stories he hears while on jury duty, a documentary filmmaker finds himself in an abandoned mall at the dead of night.
"Kia ora te whānau, Welcome back to term 3! I hope you are all safe and well. I’m sure the holidays were a little different from usual. My name is Kara and I’m the teacher allocated to the year 1 to 3 children in your sector. I know it can be hard...
"The emergency call came in before the seagulls had even started crying. It found Quinn lying sleepless on the leaky air mattress she’d set up in the back of the shop... She fumbled for her phone and raised an eyebrow at the severity rating the user had...
"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...
Content warnings 1
death
"I was 19 when I met Tommy. A day and a bit into a two-day Greyhound trip from bumfuck, Nevada to Saint Paul, Minnesota. Going to meet some trick from the internet. Thought it was true love. Funky and itching for a smoke when we pulled into a truck stop in...
"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...
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
"Marlowe is going to outlive him. Of this, he is sure. He has seen him on the streets of Blackfriars, of Southwark, in Bladder Lane, near Aldgate… He can pretend to be anything, young Kit. Not so young Kit. The two men are of an age: born the same year...
"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,...
Content warnings 1
violence
"My brother was taken away by the bears to live with them when I was small; he existed only in the song that was sung about him. His song was sung in the summer, at Sundance, but also in the winter, on the darkest day, the day he was taken away. The trade...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorchild-death
"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."
"I’ve been feeling a bit down, I suppose,’ Catherine said, ‘and my friend recommended you. She said you might be able to help.’ The doctor made a humming noise. He sat back, folding his arms. ‘Do you know what it means to cleanse, Catherine?’ he asked."
Content warnings 1
body-horror
Nine years after the ace John “The Candle” Montaño first wielded his fire powers as a teenager on the reality TV show “American Hero”, he’s landed a job as the lead investigator for a prestigious arts insurer. His latest assignment, providing security for...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Trina Nelson is a pretty, popular sixteen-year-old high school student whose idyllic life took a turn for the tragic because of the Wild Cards virus. Now, she wants nothing more than to live out her days in the shadowy anonymity of the Jokertown on the...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"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...
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...
"Disaster, betrayal, and the ship already blasting its horn. The family clusters around the packing crates, destitute, stunned. We must go regardless, says their father, this is the last ship, what else can we do? Their mother nods, frowning so as not to...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
"Michael is afraid to go farther. Pudgy pushes him on. They walk through the shrouded city, the sound of footsteps all but obscured. Pudgy holds hard to the band of the broken fedora that perches crooked atop Michael’s bent head; the knees of Pudgy’s...
"Nobody remembers exactly when it started. Probably back in the ’90s when they cloned that sheep, back in the ’10s when they started working on cloning people on the DL, back in the ’20s when the retrovirus broke our genetic virginity. If you’re rich you...
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
ableismabuseviolence
In a world dying from pollution by micro plastics, Ana struggles to protect her family, but even the food they eat is slowly killing them.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-deathgoresuicide
Today’s a big day at work, but just walking there looks to be a death-defying challenge, what with people randomly turning into monsters and such.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
You just drive the getaway car, for the same heist, over and over, trying somehow not to break the artifact that resets time.
"In the winter of 19–, having newly arrived in England, and still recovering from the nervous indisposition which had afflicted me greatly ever since my circumstances during the war, I responded to an advertisement placed in the Yorkshire Post, for the...
"It is said that Archimedes was asked by the King of Syracuse to authenticate a manuscript. King Hiero had received what purported to be Alexander of Macedon’s own copy of the Iliad, brought out from the Library at Alexandria itself. He sent envoys to...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Old Plant thinks very slowly, but it’s the oldest on the planet, and it thinks profoundly. It struggles to communicate with a group of very short-lived creatures, though, and they seem to be changing the planet.
Gorman travels the galaxy engaging in all the risky sports that only the very rich can do, but he’s haunted by an annoying robot that keeps trying to interrupt him with a birthday card.
Three little girls look for Martian monsters in the empty lava tubes under the Mars Colony. It’s off-limits, but there can’t really be anything there, can there?
An academic’s whimsical decision to take a DNA test leads her into uncharted territory, where she discovers some extraordinary truths about herself and new possibilities for her future.
When Astrill finds a cat-like alien attached to the outside of their spaceship, things get complicated for him and the other smugglers, and the more they learn about their visitor, the worse it gets.
The story of how Aned Heast, having lost a leg and his entire army, reclaimed his honor in a drought-ridden town whose adults mysteriously vanished.
Content warnings 3
deathslaveryviolence
"They didn’t believe me," I said. “They didn’t believe that I wasn’t supposed to be here—that I woke up wrong.” I lost track of time again. My attention shifted toward the floor, drawn to a crack in the tile. It was causing quite a ruckus in my mind. The...
Gil teaches students how to communicate with the Numens, vast, star-spanning alien intelligences indistinguishable from gods.
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
When Candice gets upset, she sometimes spontaneously combusts and then comes back to life. She needs to get this under control because her family can’t afford the medical bills.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
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.
Content warnings 2
self-harmsubstance-use
A wealthy woman has the multiverse searched for divergent versions of herself who’re near death, offering to add them to her personality, and they always accept. Up until now.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
In a culture that teaches that you should commit suicide when you’re at your peak, a young man kills himself after winning a prize and his parents prosecute his teacher.
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgenocide
Ruby is a powerful “Ace” who cynically does dirty jobs for bad people who help her keep her pain under control. Her world changes when a job puts her in contact with an elusive, childish, but very powerful Ace who won’t give in.
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicviolence
In the ruins of a dry, blasted Australia, Edward looks after an abandoned nine-year old girl as they travel in search of an old reservoir.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abusedeath
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.
Content warnings 1
violence
A young Wall Street investment banker tells how he lost a billion dollars in a Bitcoin for black people.
Content warnings 1
suicide
In an alternate 2018, A teenage roadie at a Who concert risks his life by using his sonic ability to try to save lives when a fire engulfs the building.
Content warnings 2
substance-useviolence
Phoebe goes to her late Mother’s townhouse to dispose of her effects and to reckon with the feelings she’s never been able to articulate.
Someone from our era look back to 1888 London and the Jack-the-Ripper murders.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
In a world we can only reach in our dreams, the Stranger rides a train through a dangerous mountain pass while a troupe of bandits plans to attack it.
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
In which we learn of the lives of immigrants to a fantastic city built on the surfaces of stars—stars that are stuck together into a cluster.
We know about the ones who walked away from Omelas, but what the heck happened to the kid in the basement?
Content warnings 2
child-abusedeath
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.
A retired superhero and a conspiracy theorist join forces to gather evidence against a mobster who’s trying to force their friend to sell her property to him.
Content warnings 1
violence
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.
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
An account of various famous artists, writers, and musicians who lived in Manhatttan in the 1930s.
After an epidemic killed off half the Earth’s population, Enfys wanders around a depopulated Europe, live blogging the experience and looking for tampons.
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
An anorexic woman has an unhealthy co-dependent relationship with her alcoholic roommate, her “friend” since childhood. But she also has a monstrous secret.
Content warnings 1
substance-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.
A young woman discovers she has the ability to fly, just as her mother did. But her father thinks there’s something shameful about it, so she tries to suppress it.
Content warnings 2
abuseself-harm
A doomsday weapon has changed the laws of physics on Earth, and most of the population has perished. Liyana spends her time trying to have a baby and studying elephants, who have started to spontaneously combust.
Content warnings 2
deathpregnancy-loss
In an Ireland recovering from the great famine of the 2030s, a young woman gets a job with an older doctor who’s growing odd things in her garden.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
In early 20th-Century India, an old woman and her son are forced out of the forest and try to make a new life in the city.
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.
As a prostitute in Liverpool in 1763, Lolly has a hard life. She steals from a well-dressed corpse she finds in the river, with unexpected results.
Content warnings 3
child-deathsexual-contentviolence
It has only been five years since The Fall, but the clinic where teenage Kath works is the only medical service for two hundred miles.
In midwinter, just after midnight, the narrator hitches a ride with a strange woman as cold as the night itself.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
Cloe is a black android built to let white people act out their aggressions.
Content warnings 3
racismsexual-violenceviolence
The narrator and his friend are racing towards Florida running away from the drug dealer they repossessed it from. But something worse is waiting in front of them.
In 1949, researchers attempt to harness "oriental lovebird energy" to cure human comas.
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneracismsuicide
Maria is a super model in a future that doesn't hesitate to modify the bodies of the models for maximum impact.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
In 1880s London, Sir Arthur's "Illogic Engine" has gone missing, so he seeks help from Mycroft Holmes.
A Greek free diver finds an ancient shipwreck where there was nothing at all just days earlier.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Michael sips his coffee, watching the screen automatically cycle through vidfeeds coming in from across the country, lingering just long enough to hit the relevant button. He knows the dominionist rhetoric, had heard it in the media, read it when he...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
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.
"On Miphre, a planet hardly larger than a moon, jagged mountaintops stab above the cloud cover and harbor small ecosystems in the palms of their hands: rock eels and ribbon mosses and seabirds with rodents clutched to their breasts, each one nestled...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmbody-horrordeath
"The formula for how to end the world got published the same day I married the girl who used to bully me in middle school. We found out about it the morning after, on the first day of our honeymoon in Cozumel. I got out of the shower in our small bungalow...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnessracism
"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...
Content warnings 3
mental-illnessracismtransphobia
"Valentini doesn’t flinch when the purple-bellied storm shakes the house, heedless of the film being shot within its derelict husk. Scene fifteen, take three. The Hollow Places crew rushes to stop the windows’ skeletal rattling before the atmospheric...
Content warnings 3
child-deathgoreself-harm
A woman losing her sight turns to small family magics to save the lives of those she loves the most.
Content warnings 1
war
"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...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-content
"One: My lipstick. The shade is Heart’s Blood. Morbid, if you ask me. I wanted to know if it was really the color of heart’s blood so I bought beef heart and tried dabbing my lips. Close enough. I emailed to congratulate the lipstick company on their...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
racism
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
When the portal collapse isolated the colony, the colonists struggled to survive on a world where the dark forests lured people to their deaths, turning them into “demons.”
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Long ago, some people leapt from a slave ship, and something transformed their bodies so she they could breathe water. Today, her descendants try to cope with a changing ocean.
Content warnings 3
goresexual-violenceviolence
Unexpectedly, you woke up female this morning, in someone else's body. Now you have to decide what to do about it.
Content warnings 3
misogynysexual-contentsexual-violence
Hiding from her own problems, Winona volunteers at the local ornithological museum after she hits a bird with her car.
Content warnings 3
abusedeathracism
An Arab-American girl and her mother wander the Dakotas while the girl tries to get in touch with a boy she once knew.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onewar
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...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorracismviolence
Able Seaman Pol has a lot of problems — getting the cats fed, watered, and reporting for duty, keeping tree roots from destroying the wiring, the monkeys out of the pantry and the mines from exploding on deck. Talking octopuses, though? That was new....
Content warnings 2
deathwar
A woman slowly smokes herself to death to protest an atrocity. When her cigarette supply runs low, a local kid grappling with both the protest and the atrocity brings her a cigar. Content warnings: Self-harm (smoking), references to genocide, a dead body,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathwar
A young scribe joins a voyage to hunt sea creatures in waters that once belonged to the feared Northerners, but the truth behind the Northern myths is more complex than they first believed. Content warnings: Animal cruelty and death, use of the r-word...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmgoreviolence
In a post-apocalyptic world, a mother accidentally becomes a leader and a god. Content warnings: Death of a spouse, natural disasters, references to pre-disaster ableism Copyright © 2026 khōréō magazine. Story by K. Lynn Harrison, edited by Danai...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Ending 1 The world decays. It is your fault. Ending 2 The world decays. It is only somewhat your fault. Ending 3 Do I need to say it? Are you beginning to understand? Ending 4 Clearly not. Ending 5 You cannot save him. Every time you try it only...
Content warnings 3
deathself-harmviolence
This episode features "A Life Measured in Seconds" written by Anne Wilkins. Published in the June 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/wilkins_06_26...
Content warnings 2
abusebody-horror
Building this setlist had been terrifying. Of course we’d debated our Tiny™ Concert set over the years, but never pictured this.
Gerry and I didn’t have kids though we’d tried. I’d lost those babies in the fourth month, the fifth month, the fourth month again. By then I was so exhausted by hope and disappointment that I didn’t want to do it again. Gerry didn’t push me since we had...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
This episode features "All the Ruined Doorways of the Moon" written by Eilis O'Neal. Published in the August 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
This was in August of 2019. A day-old newspaper reported civil wars in Somalia and Yemen. A gunman killed twenty-two people in an El Paso Walmart. Jeffrey Epstein had taken a plea deal, promising to name names, promising to name the name .
Content warnings 3
substance-usesuicideviolence
“Rivers do not drink their own water; trees do not eat their own fruit; the sun does not shine on itself, and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. […]
This episode features "Bend Like the Palm" written by David D. Levine. 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/levine_03_26 Support...
If only Serthe'P had been able to fit in, maybe she could have protected —. No. This thought was dangerous. Mnth’R had helped her understand that their isolation had more to do with the Raja’s exploitation of their cast’s fears than any shortcomings of...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
The magician raises his wand. Initially, this commission seemed simple. One large country invading a much smaller one, a clear case of aggressor and victim—but nothing is ever so straightforward.
Content note (click for details) Homophobia, transphobia edited by Hal Y. Zhang On October 19th, 2019, Stonewall Productions released Coming Out to Your Parents on PC and PlayStation 4. While it was the studio’s first major title, it took the gaming...
Content warnings 2
transphobiaviolence
edited by Ziv Wities Here is Jefferson, talking to himself again. It has happened increasingly of late. The pantograph in the study summarizes his monologue endlessly, and the shelves fill with more and more of less and less. In the great and...
Content warnings 1
slavery
Content note (click for details) Implied sexual assault of a teen, death of an animal edited by Hal Y. Zhang I toss the keys on the green Formica counter. I always aim for the same spot: that ugly, little brown ring—bubbled up and cracking—where Bill had...
Content warnings 3
abuseanimal-harmchild-abuse
Content note (click for details) Graphic depictions of violence, violence against animals edited by David Steffen We are killers in search of new hunting grounds. We fear only starvation and others of our kind. We are wolfish comrades, strong in our...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmdeathgore
Despite the two hundred and fifty-two million years that separate us, I feel close to you tonight, dear trilobites.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
The airship’s spotlights played off the vast rocky sides of the shaft that plunged deep into the Earth’s core through the lithosphere and eventually to our destination: the Center of the Earth! I yawned. We fell so slowly, the sides of the shaft several...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Personality Disorder (Not Otherwise Specified) My patients called me Dr. Holloway. My friends called me Jason. I won’t tell you what my three ex-wives called me but I’m sure you can guess. I was a psychiatrist (and a damn good one seventy percent of the...
Content warnings 3
mental-illnesssubstance-usesuicide
Author : ace tilton ratcliff Narrator : Jordan Kurella Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1038: Meet the Mets is an Escape Pod original. Contains brief moments of violence and bigotry towards a transgender character Sponsored by...
Content warnings 2
transphobiaviolence
Author : Tim Pratt Narrator : Isabel J. Kim Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “The Many Rebirths of Karina Morita” first appeared in 2025 on Tim’s Patreon Sponsored by Mixtape Stories The Many Rebirths of Karina Morita by Tim Pratt My...
Author : Rio Lombana 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...
Content warnings 1
child-death
Lise’s personas have no warning when the XexlCo Construct appears at the gate of her memory garden, smiling cheerfully at each of her personas in turn like a neighborhood milkman making his daily rounds. They watch the newcomer saunter by with open...
Content warnings 1
violence
The guillotine was conceived as swifter, painless, more humane. You touch your throat. You wonder.
Content warnings 3
self-harmsexual-contentsuicide
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...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath
There’s a wolf where my brother used to be, a beast absolutely hellbent on ruining my life. He plunges his broad snoot into the Wednesday night spaghetti, and neither Mom nor Dad cares when half the bite slides off his nose and onto the table, to later be...
Feast #1 We stare at Judar of the Island, stunned, as he picks up a piece of roasted chicken and bites into the place where thigh meets leg, the marinade smearing the corners of his mouth. His teeth sink into the flesh again, then again, then again, until...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
“Always just. Always magical.” When the four of us first started working as Magical Girls, we penned the slogan in a McDonalds, giggling about how corny it sounded. Annie joked about how we’d still be calling ourselves magical girls when we were eighty,...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
The other animals in my territory keep disappearing; it’s perfect. The yard is safer without the cats, so I’m free to search the bushes for unwanted guests while I consider […]
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
“God” is not the word I’d use. But it is the only one that suffices. There are all kinds of gods: the old and the new; the useful, the useless; the capricious and the dependable; the wrathful and the meek. They all had one thing in common—whether they were...
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
I first reached consciousness in a peaceful library. It looked like a library not far from my apartment, though not exactly the same. There were high ceilings and large windows […]
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
This episode features "Passenger Pigeons, Dodos, Neanderthals" written by Jordan Alexander. Published in the August 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
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...
Content warnings 1
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 : Victor Forna Narrators : Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Munashe R. Goromonzi, Wanini Kimemiah, Tahnia Barrie, Soila Kenya and Opie Ogundiran Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Previously published by Apex Magazine Rated PG Kɛrozin Lamp Kurfi...
Content warnings 1
violence
Author : Lia Lao Narrator : Curtis C. Chen Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie PodCastle 956: Revolutions, as Told by a Humble Rice Farmer is a PodCastle original. Content notes for famine and sibling death Rated PG Revolutions, as Told by a...
Content warnings 2
deathwar
PseudoPod 1020: Walking Tour of Scarborough in Nuclear Winter is a PseudoPod original. Rogue One final scene 30 Days Of Night trailer From the author: “All of the landmarks in this story are real places in Scarborough, where my mother grew up and where I...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
“Witchcraft” was first printed in Ornaments in Jade, 1924 “How I Turned My Little Brother Human” was first published in Shaky Pictures of Vanished Faces, edited by Eric Raglin, in September 2025 “Visit Seahaven” was first published in Factor Four magazine...
Content warnings 3
child-deathpregnancy-losssubstance-use
PseudoPod 1027: This Thing of Darkness is a PseudoPod original. C/W: grief, approaching death Nissa Harlow: nissaharlow.com Tina Connolly: tinaconnolly.com ‘Don’t Put a Rug on a Polished Floor’ public information film Scarred for Life on Bluesky:...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Everyone knows the Walls around the cities fell. What some people don’t remember is that the first one fell because of a laugh. It sounded like a ringing bell. Not like it came out of a baby at all. That was the first thing I told the scholar boy. He was a...
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
We'd only lived in Arizona four years—it was our retirement place. But I'd died there, and she'd dumped my ashes out in the desert without fanfare, without any poem or prayer, unless you considered, “Jesus, Marty, don't leave me. Why'd you leave me, you...
This is our struggle. We scuttle on the sand before the softly breathing salt-burdened sea with the lichen on the rocks a bright poison green and great white butterflies screaming under a red sky while we dream of justice and watch the ghost of a...
Content note: suicidal ideation “Please—turn it off!” A pained, painful wail from the room across the hall; soundtrack laughter dissolving into guttural thunder as a film projector slowed to a stop. “Well damn,” said the stranger who was entering the...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
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...
Content warnings 2
deathwar
This episode features "The Potential Side Effects of Roleplay Stimulation Therapy" written by Claire Jia-Wen. Published in the June 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
Content warnings 3
abuseself-harmsubstance-use
He hates the birds. There are two, a breeding pair. Their eyes are red as devils’. On land they’re stupid, little feet pushed so far back on their bodies that they can’t escape by running. Yet they glide over the water, glossy mottled boats. Their chicks...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmviolencewar
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 […]
Content Warning: Mentions of hurt children On Saturday morning, Amélia received a call from the Santa Minerva Nursing Home for the Empowered Elderly. They didn’t use to call except for urgent matters. It could only mean one thing: Vovó had passed away....
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.
. . . We interrupt our programming- “ . . . for this incredible announcement. The first one thousand customers get an extra 15 percent off during this holiday weekend and . . . ” “ . . . it’s buy one, […]
Content warnings 3
substance-useviolencewar
This episode features "Three Cases from the Cosmic Psychiatric Clinic" written by Pan Haitian. Published in the June 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Dear Members of the Community, As we begin yet another fall semester in the throes of the rogue timestream unleashed on our campus, I cannot help but take a moment to marvel at just how vibrant our community has become. In addition to our current...
Content warnings 2
slaveryviolence
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...
Content warnings 3
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....
Content warnings 1
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...
Content warnings 2
self-harmviolence
"At night, Olivia becomes a spider. She scurries down San Francisco streets, floats gently between cotton-candy-colored houses, and hides behind signs for trendy restaurants, like Trough and Instance. By day, she works as a software engineer for a company...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Billionaire's Tears By Vanessa Ricci-Thode I wake up to the sound of screaming, and know I’m going to die. I shoot out of bed, calling for my mother. First thing I’ve spoken clearly in two days. “Maria!” My mother bursts into my room. “Baby, what’s wrong?”...
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemictransphobia
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...
Content warnings 1
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...
Content warnings 1
war
Once Upon a Planet By Kelsey Hutton Once upon a time, there were three boring, totally normal planets lazily circling their sun. One was too hot. It spewed out venomous flames like a firebreather with something pokey stuck in her teeth—dangerously...
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...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsexual-contentviolence
Once Abandoned By A.P. Hawkins Sappel whistled as he walked to the construction site, the sound echoing off nearby buildings in a muffled way. It was early spring, and the city was bursting with the vibrant green of new growth. Wild edibles sprouted from...
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...
Content warnings 1
child-abuse
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
violence
Author : Cécile Cristofari Narrator : Wilson Fowlie Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums Previously published by Interzone Content warning for dementia Rated PG The Third Time I Saw a Fox by Cécile Cristofari “You know what I...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
Author : Brigitte Winter Narrator : Julia Rios Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums Previously published by New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention Content warnings for violence and coercive control Rated R...
Content warnings 3
abusegoreviolence
Author : J.J. Roth Narrators : Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, Jen R. Albert, Dagny Paul, Graeme Dunlop, Summer Fletcher, Matt Dovey, Alasdair Stuart, Marguerite Kenner, Eleanor R. Wood and Steven Capps Host : Emmalia Harrington Audio Producers : Eric Valdes and...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Author : E. M. Faulds Narrator : Eliza Chan Host : Devin Martin Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 902: Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike is a PodCastle original. Content warning for ableist attitudes Rated PG-13 Godzilla as a Young...
Content warnings 2
ableismillness-and-pandemic
Author : Charles Chin Narrator : Eric Valdes Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 903: On the Shoulders of Giants is a PodCastle original. content warning for suicidal ideation Rated PG On the Shoulders of Giants by Charles Chin I was...
Content warnings 1
suicide
Author : Stephanie Malia Morris Narrator : Dominick Rabrun Host : Wilson Fowlie Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 909: Resurrection Rum is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for death, gun violence, and racism Rated PG-13 Resurrection Rum by...
Content warnings 3
deathracismviolence
Author : Lalini Shanela Ranaraja Narrator : Shweta Adhyam Host : Eric Valdes Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously Published in Strange Horizons, 15 August 2022 Issue. Content warnings for animal cruelty, blood, and suicide Rated PG-13...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Author : Diana Dima Narrator : Matt Dovey Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums PodCastle 918: Waterways is a PodCastle original. Content warning for self-harm and coercive control Rated PG Waterways by Diana Dima When his father...
Content warnings 2
abuseself-harm
Authors : B. Morris Allen, David McGuire and Courtney Floyd Narrators : Hugo Jackson, Steve Anderson and Kaitlyn Zivanovich Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 919: FLASH FICTION EXTRAVAGANZA: Possibilities is a PodCastle original. The...
Author : Leah Ning Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 924: Reverent is a PodCastle original. Rated PG-13 Reverent by Leah Ning It’s the smell of gravity that tells me Father’s been to my rooms: empty and...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
“The Squatters” originally appeared in the 2025 Anthology, Silk and Sinew C/W for mass graves, genocide The government begins excavating the bones in late February to coincide with the events planned to commemorate the massacre. It is meant to gesture that...
Content warnings 3
child-deathgenocidewar
“House Traveler” originally appeared in Bourbon Penn #34, Dec. 2024 and is reprinted in Thomas Ha’s debut collection, “Uncertain Sons and Other Stories” C/W: alludes to alcoholism The five of us were gathered on the floor of one of the last houses, trying...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
“The Children of the Event” was first published in the collection ‘Portraits of Decay’ by Carson Winter, published by Salt Heart Press in June 2025. To support us during our year-end campaign, go to escapeartists.net/support-ea Notes from the author: As...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
“Dead Mabelle” first appeared in the 1929 collection Joining Charles and Other Stories CW: Allusions to suicide The sudden and horrible end of Mabelle Pacey gave her a publicity with the European press worth millions to J. and Z. Gohigh of Gohigh Films...
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
“The Shout” was first published in a limited edition chapbook, The Woburn Books #16, 1929. Jamie Oliver’s controversial children’s book has shone a spotlight on the importance of sensitivity readers Jamie Oliver pulls ‘offensive’ children’s book from sale...
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnessracism
“Powers Of Darkness” was first published in Collier’s, March 30, 1929. CW: Use of racial slurs as well as sexism and misogyny Beau Geste, Russel’s best known work was adapting this for the screen. Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness Nickerson, R.M., failed in...
Content warnings 3
misogynyracismviolence
PseudoPod 961: Body Heat is a PseudoPod original. C/W: death of a family member, cancer From the author: ‘Body Heat’ was inspired by a reoccurring dream during a 3-week solo expedition in the mountains. Void Merch Hot Singles In Your Area The river is...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
“Fat Betty” originally appeared in Shock Totem Issue 8 in 2014 From the author: “The story is meant to be set in a slightly dystopian near-future.” Fat Betty Listed Monuments The Watchers Ghost Stories The Woman in Black They say it’s God’s own country,...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
First published in Opportunity in 1925. When Hurston arrived in New York City in 1925, the Harlem Renaissance was at its zenith, and she soon became one of the writers at its center. Shortly before she entered Barnard, Hurston’s short story “Spunk” was...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
“Jesus Christ in Georgia” was printed in The Crisis in the 1911 Christmas issue. It later appeared as “Jesus Christ in Texas” in Darkwater: Voices from the Veil. Use of the n-word 2010 interview with author Edward J. Blum about his 2008 book, W. E. B....
Content warnings 3
deathracismviolence
“Nesters” originally appeared in the anthology Lovecraft’s Children CW: Animal death They killed the last calf that morning. Ma wanted to hold off, give the poor thing a chance, but Pa said it were cruel to let a body live like that. He cracked the hammer...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmbody-horrordeath
“Think of Me” was first published in the anthology DARK RAINBOW: QUEER EROTIC HORROR (Riverdale Ave., 2018) CW: explicit sex, self-harm, transphobia, body horror, S&M kink Strange Darling Sasha and Taylor are fucking and Sasha is thinking about me. She...
Content warnings 3
self-harmsexual-contenttransphobia
“The Suitable Surroundings” was first published in the San Francisco Examiner, July 14, 1889 “The Resurrection of Chilton Hills” first appeared in Harper’s Monthly Magazine in October 1929. C/W: suicide (The Suitable Surroundings) Ben Phillips’s music ?...
Content warnings 1
suicide
"DIRECTIONS: Fill in the correct letter with a #2 pencil on the answer sheet. Do not use ink or ballpoint pens. Questions left blank will be marked incorrect. Completely fill in each circle."
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrormental-illnessself-harm
Author : Eugie Foster Narrator : Mur Lafferty Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story was first published in Escape Pod 388 (March 21, 2013) Contains harsh language and graphic gory violence Trixie and the Pandas of Dread by Eugie...
Content warnings 3
goreracismviolence
Rupert Weard and the Case of the Adamant Annihilist By Rob Gillham Rupert Weard leapt into the drawing room, escaping a hallway dense with impossibly angled, tentacular horrors trying to sell him insurance. "Ye gods, it's bedlam out there," he said. "Just...
Author : Kelsey Hutton Narrator : Samantha Loney Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies Content warning for racism and racial slurs Rated PG-13 Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea...
Content warnings 1
racism
Author : Kelsey Hutton Narrator : Samantha Loney Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies Content warning for racism and racial slurs Rated PG-13 Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea...
Content warnings 1
racism
Authors : Samantha Murray, Avra Margariti and Devin Miller Narrators : Eliza Chan, Matt Dovey and Srikripa Krishna Prasad Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums This Blue World Previously published by Fantasy Magazine (Issue 83)...
Authors : Derrick Boden and Kevin Sandefur Narrators : J.S. Arquin and Dani Daly Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums When the Giants Came Through the Valley – Previously published by Lightspeed Floaters – Previously published...
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
Author : Charlie Sorrenson Narrator : Rebecca Wei Hsieh Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums Previously published by Tor.com Content warnings for violence, assault, misogyny, and PTSD. Rated PG-13 Flight by Charlie Sorrenson...
Content warnings 3
misogynysexual-violenceviolence
Author : Sara S. Messenger Narrator : Cherrae L. Stuart Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums Previously published by Fantasy Magazine (Reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy, Vol. 2, 2023, Pyr Books) Rated PG-13 Potemora in the...
Content warnings 1
violence
Authors : C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez Narrators : C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by Clockwork Phoenix and as PodCastle episode 669 Content warnings for illness...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Author : E. F. Benson Narrator : Devin Martin Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Originally published by Hutchinson’s Magazine, October 1928 Content warning for references to grief Rated PG Pirates by E.F. Benson For many...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Author : Nick Douglas Narrator : Wilson Fowlie Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 843: The Mountain and the Vulture is a PodCastle original. Rated PG-13 The Mountain and the Vulture by Nick Douglas “High in the...
Author : Chip Houser Narrator : Leigh Wallace Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by Bourbon Penn Content warning for bodily fluids Rated R On Snowflake-veined Wings by Chip Houser Amalia runs her finger...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
Author : Rati Mehrotra Narrator : Shweta Adhyam Host : Kaitlyn Zivanovich Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by The Deadlands Content warnings for death and injury Rated PG-13 Amma’s Kitchen by Rati Mehrotra I can always...
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deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Authors : Anna Mikhalevskaya and Elvira Rizaeva Narrator : Yaroslav Barsukov Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 846: Against All Odds is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for war, death, injury, and child...
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deathviolencewar
Author : Ken Liu Narrators : Curtis C. Chen, Dagny Paul, Eleanor R. Wood, Stefani Cox, Wilson Fowlie, Matt Dovey, Jen R. Albert, Peter Adrian Behravesh, Summer Fletcher and Craig Jackson Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums...
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Author : Vylar Kaftan Narrator : Elie Hirschman Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by Shimmer and as PodCastle 128 Rated PG Something Wicked This Way Plumbs by Vylar Kaftan Oh, the watercooler jug? Yeah, I...
Authors : Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt Narrator : Alasdair Stuart Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 871: Homes for the Holidays is a PodCastle original. Rated PG-13 This episode is dedicated in loving memory of Orion...
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death
PseudoPod 916: Flash on the Borderlands LXX: Through a Glass Darkly is a PseudoPod original. “Three Awakenings: Hello, World” is a PseudoPod original “Mirrors at Night” is a PseudoPod original “A Persistent Woman” was originally published in the 1927...
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abuse
“Just Another Apocalypse” originally appeared in Two Thousand Word Terrors released by Rooster Republic Press in 2023. Highway Song by Iggy Pop We cruise up the 5, zombies staggering on either side of the highway, their cerulean balloons straining in the...
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cannibalismgoreviolence
“Black Bargain” was originally published in Weird Tales, May 1942 “What Every Young Ghoul Should Know” was originally published in Amateur Correspondent, September-October 1937 What Every Young Ghoul Should Know” is a little piece of ephemera from an...
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deathviolence
PseudoPod 936: Flash on the Borderlands LXXI: A Gibbet of Flesh is a PseudoPod original. “Every Part of You”: CW terminal illness, body horror, insects “Every Part of You” was first published in OOZE: Little Bursts of Body Horror, edited by Ruth Anna...
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body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onegore
PseudoPod 937: The Yearning of the All-Devouring Earth is a PseudoPod original. It’s always when we find a moment of peace that the universe remembers we exist—or maybe it’s less that the universe remembers, and more that it feels bored in our general...
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“The Slow Music of Drums” was originally published in the 2024 Anthology Northern Nights edited by Michael Kelly TW: features grief, an implied apocalypse, sinister music, a family curse, cosmic horror and bees Astute readers and listeners may be aware, or...
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child-deathdeathsuicide
“If You Don’t Want a Cat, Don’t Get a Kitten” originally appeared in the 2024 collection Recreational Panic From the author: “I dedicated one of my stories, ‘If You Don’t Want a Cat, Don’t Get a Kitten’, to Brian Keene. His adventures with stray kittens...
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“Be Not Afraid” originally appeared in the 2024 anthology We Mostly Come Out at Night edited by Rob Costello The Mothman The Mothman Prophecies (Book) The Mothman Prophecies (Film) Krampus Krampus (2015 movie) “Take out all the yellow ones,” Mamaw says....
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“Summer Night” was first published in the 2024 anthology Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror “Chosen” was first published in the 2024 anthology Howls from the Scene of the Crime “The Encausting” was first published in Seaside Gothic and...
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deathhomophobiaviolence
We drive iron nails through my sister's feet and into the dusty floorboards below to keep her from flying away.
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I’ll always wonder: did the Timeless come here for the Bog? Or did the Bog come here for them?
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Budo By Tade Thompson “Being desirous, on the other hand, to obviate the misunderstanding and disputes which might in future arise from new acts of occupation (prises de possession) on the coast of Africa; and concerned, at the same time, as to the means...
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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...
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suicide
Author : LP Kindred Narrator : LP Kindred Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story originally appeared in Anathema: Spec from the Margins (July 2022) Content warning for NSFW language, sex Wanderlust by L. P. Kindred When he first...
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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...
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#buttonsinweirdplaces By Simon Kewin The buttons started to appear on the last day of April, 2022. A six-year-old boy from Nairobi, Jomi Mbenzi, was perhaps the first to spot one. Dawdling along behind his mother, her swaying yellow-orange dress and the...
#buttonsinweirdplaces (Part 2 of 2) By Simon Kewin (... Continued from Part 1) The news the following morning was bad. An explosion in the middle of a market-square in Libya had been variously blamed upon a suicide-bomber and upon over-zealous security...
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violence
Author : Z. K. Abraham Narrator : C. L. Clark Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 772: “Mama uat-ur” is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for references to torture and suicide Rated PG-13 Mama uat-ur By Z. K....
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Author : Deborah L. Davitt Narrator : Dave Robison Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums Previously published by The Overcast Rated PG-13 A Thousand Echoes in One Voice by Deborah L. Davitt You’ve snuck through doors that should...
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Author : Harold R. Thompson Narrator : Wilson Fowlie Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 782: The Girl Who Never Was is a PodCastle original. Content Warning for the death of a spouse. Rated PG The Girl Who Never Was...
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Author : Benjamin Rosenbaum Narrator : Graeme Dunlop Hosts : Matt Dovey and Ann Leckie Audio Producers : Eric Valdes and Pria Wood Discuss on Forums Originally published in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, edited by David Moles and Jay Lake. Previously...
Authors : M. Stevenson and Jo Miles Narrators : Andrew K. Hoe, Eric Valdes and Valerie Valdes Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums “My Custom Monster” was previously published by Fireside Fiction August 2021 “Scales” is a...
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Authors : Tanya Aydelott, M.K. Hutchins and Lindsey Godfrey Eccles Narrators : Kaitlyn Zivanovich, Sofía Barker and Karen Menzel (née Bovenmyer) Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums “The Greenhouse Bargain” was previously...
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child-deathdeathwar
Author : Celeste Rita Baker Narrator : Derrick O’Neal Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums PodCastle 793: Dip and Roll is a PodCastle original. Rated PG Dip and Roll by Celeste Rita Baker On de largest beach of de smallest...
Author : Derek Des Anges Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 799: A Change of Clothes is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for references to child abuse and looooots of swearing Rated...
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Author : John Wiswell Narrator : Sarah Griffin Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously Published in Tor Content warnings for self harm and chronic illness Rated PG-13 D.I.Y. By John Wiswell People ask how Noah could...
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Author : Taryn Frazier Narrator : Dani Daly Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums PodCastle 801: Point of Order is a PodCastle original. Rated PG-13 Point of Order by Taryn Frazier Behind his screen, the game master cracks his...
Author : Natalia Theodoridou Narrators : Peter Adrian Behravesh, Jen R. Albert and Tina Connolly Hosts : Matt Dovey and Jen R. Albert Audio Producers : Eric Valdes and Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published by Shimmer. Previously...
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violencewar
Author : JL George Narrator : Jordan Price Williams Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums Previously published by Fireside Rated R Diamonds and Pearls by JL George Diamonds are two a penny, but everybody wants them anyway. At...
PseudoPod 859: We, the Ones Who Raised Sam Gowers from the Dead is a PseudoPod original. CW: Homophobic/transphobic violence Yes, to answer your questions, we were the ones who did it; we were the ones who dabbled into the forbidden arts, who so casually...
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Both “Coincidence” and “The Dream” originally appeared in The London Magazine, April 1927 and June 1927 respectively This is the story of a coincidence. At any rate I call it a coincidence. The road where I live is very long and very straight. It’s paved...
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death
“All the Ways to Hollow Out a Girl” was originally published in Horror for RAICES from Nightscape Press and reprinted in the charity anthology Shattered and Splintered. It’s almost noon on Friday when the neighborhood boys murder me again for the third...
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abusemisogynyviolence
PseudoPod 865: Wanted: Bone-White Skull-Patterned Lace Trim is a PseudoPod original. The stroller on the side of the road caught Nina Wong’s eye as her Fiesta rounded the bend on her way to work. She slowed down, noting the FREE! sign taped to its handles....
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“The Coward Who Stole God’s Name” originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine in their May issue in 2022. “If I named any of the inspirations for this story, then I’d get into terrible trouble, wouldn’t I? You’d hate to upset Gavin and those who love him. This...
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“The Strange Island of Dr. Nork” was first published in Weird Tales, March 1949 CW: racist language. Please note this story was first published in 1949 and contains language which would not be acceptable today, particularly with regards to race. Afflicted...
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racismviolence
“The Grave of Angels” first appeared in Vastarien Volume 4 Issue 1, June 2021. CW: intimate partner death From the author: “This story incorporates many of my recurrent themes–rituals, religion, the end of the world, and did not end up where I thought it...
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“Midnight in the Southland” was previously published in Liminal Spaces: An Anthology of Dark Speculative Fiction by Cemetery Gates Media in 2021. “From the grim Ohio Valley to the mists of the Appalachian Plateau, this is Midnight in the Southland with...
The Heroine Kokofe By Ife J. Ibitayo Kokofe awoke an hour before dawn, crusty-eyed and groggy. She wobbled to her feet and washed her face. Her simuclip projected her reflection before her eyes. Already dressed, her pink all-weather blouse draped over her...
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Universal Archive of Human History: FAQ By Arturo Sierra The Gran Gliese Universal Archive of Human History contains over 5.7×1035 books and an innumerable collection of shorter works. Moreover, it is continuously growing, thanks to additions from...
Love and Supervillains By Caroline Diorio The gals here at the Raleigh Women’s Asylum for the Nefariously Gifted have a little saying they like to share with the newbies: fuck a superhero once, shame on him; fuck a superhero twice, shame on you. Well,...
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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...
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deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Hold it right there, gasbag.’ The red balloon turned. The beam of a searchlight from high above momentarily crisscrossed the dark alleyway, catching the smooth surface of his face and the scotch tape scar on the left. ‘… Oh, it’s you,’ he said. Three big...
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deathsubstance-useviolence
Author : Nicole D. Sconiers Narrator : Laurice White Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published by Nightlight Podcast Rated PG-13 The Stiffening by Nicole D. Sconiers I was eight years old when I...
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Authors : Marisca Pichette, Dafydd McKimm and Devin Miller Narrators : Scott Campbell, Matt Dovey and Kelly Robson Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums “Water We Made to Breathe” and “A Partial Record of Enchanted...
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Author : Eleanna Castroianni Narrator : Alethea Kontis Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published by Fireside Content warnings for war, imprisonment, and torture Rated PG-13 An Incomplete Account of the...
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deathviolencewar
Author : Patrick Freyne Narrator : Eleanor R. Wood Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published by Winter Papers Volume 5 Content warning for drowning, malnourishment, and extreme peril Rated PG-13 The...
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Author : Renan Bernardo Narrator : Diogo Ramos Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums PodCastle 737: The Eight Hundred Legs of the Rio-Niterói Bridge is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for death of a parent, grief, and...
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deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Author : Jaxon Tempest Narrator : Soleil Knowles Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums PodCastle 741: Between The Island and the Deep Blue Sea is a PodCastle original. Rated PG-13 Between The Island and the Deep Blue Sea By Jaxon...
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deathviolence
Author : Kate Heartfield Narrator : Kaitlyn Zivanovich Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 742: The Morning House is a PodCastle original. Content warning for dementia Rated PG-13 The Morning House By Kate Heartfield...
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mental-illnessracism
Authors : Dafydd McKimm and Timothy Mudie Narrators : Alasdair Stuart and Kyle Akers Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums “I Will You Back to Time and Space” was originally published by Flash Fiction Online “The Ocean-Eyed Boy”...
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Author : Caroline M. Yoachim Narrator : Miyuki Jane Pinckard Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producers : Devin Martin and Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by Uncanny Magazine Rated R The music for the promotion intro is “Sneaky Snitch” Kevin...
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sexual-content
Author : Caroline M. Yoachim Narrator : Miyuki Jane Pinckard Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producers : Devin Martin and Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by Uncanny Magazine Rated R “The Traveler’s Guide to the Goblin Fells is an expansion book...
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death-of-a-loved-one
Author : Caroline M. Yoachim Narrator : Miyuki Jane Pinckard Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producers : Devin Martin and Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by Uncanny Magazine Rated R “The Traveler’s Guide to the Goblin Fells is an expansion book...
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Author : Deborah L. Davitt Narrator : Karen Menzel (née Bovenmyer) Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by NewMyths #51 Content Warning for loss of a spouse Rated PG-13 We Are All of Us by Deborah L. Davitt...
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Authors : Samantha Murray, Lindsey Godfrey Eccles and Stewart C Baker Narrators : Emma Osborne, Dave Robison and Eleanor R. Wood Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums “On the Corner of Fulton and West” is a PodCastle Original!...
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Author : Kelsey Hutton Narrator : Laurie McDougall Host : Sofía Barker Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Artist : Cindy Fan Discuss on Forums PodCastle 761: INDIGENOUS MAGIC – The Bone Pickers is a PodCastle original. Content Warning for themes of genocide...
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deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneracism
“The Rocking-Horse Winner” was first published in Harper’s Bazaar, July 1926. There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she...
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abusechild-death
“New to It All” first appeared in the collection I Would Haunt You If I Could published in March of 2021 by Undertow. My first girlfriend, Niamh, was a scratcher. Saoirse wasn’t like that. The first time Niamh asked me to stay the night, she was testing me...
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body-horrorsexual-content
“Sometimes Boys Don’t Know” was originally published in the July 2021 issue of Nightmare Magazine. “Human Body as Compendium” is a PseudoPod original. “Never Enough Pockets” is a PseudoPod original Never Enough Pockets: body horror, self-harm “Human Body...
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“Laughter Among the Trees” was previously published by The Dark Magazine on February 1st 2021. The highway to the campground cuts through the granite Laurentian Plateau like a desiccated wound. It’s been twenty five years since I’ve retraced this road and,...
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PseudoPod 804: Flash on the Borderlands LXI: Dead Man’s Party (April Fools’ Version) is a PseudoPod original. “The Tentacle and You” was originally published in Nature Futures back in 2019. “Backers” is a PseudoPod Original “Your Honor, My Undead Client...
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PseudoPod 806 : Garden Empire is a PseudoPod original. Insects, lots of insects I’d bought the house only the week before, when I was still in possession both of my teeth and of my job as the Head of Machine Learning for an Auckland-based startup. A...
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PseudoPod 810: Her Face All Teeth is a PseudoPod original. Denny did not want to spy on the confessional, but at the same time, he did. He wanted what he did not want, or he did not want to want what he wanted. As a Catholic, he should have been...
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“The Old Switcheroo” first appeared in the anthology What One Wouldn’t Do from Scott J. Moses in autumn 2021. Calvin and I have been happy here, all told. With both of us orphaned early on, we were lucky to find each other, lucky to get out of the city and...
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body-horrorcannibalismviolence
PseudoPod 818: Flash on the Borderlands LXII: Flash Fiction Contest 7 Winners is a PseudoPod original. Position: Overnight home companion for shut in. Must be able to read. Lack of imagination a plus. Salary: 250 dollars a night. I’ve never seen who pays....
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body-horrorwar
“Balloon Season” has previously been featured in Fusion Fragment and Dark Matter Magazine. I’ve never gotten used to the sense of urgency of summer afternoons, that feeling of being drenched in the thickness of that still, blanketed heat, and trying to...
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“Dream House” originally appeared in the anthology Georgia Gothic Alice and Rick turned off the highway onto the twisting gravel road. Oaks arched overhead, a tunnel of green. “Haven’t I always said I wanted a long driveway,” Rick said. “A daily nature...
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pregnancy-loss
PseudoPod 827: She Works in the Office Where They Died is a PseudoPod original. Dezra works in an office where 1000 people died. Well, 1082. People round down. No one’s told the ones who died. “Good morning,” says Dezra, to Brenda the security guard who...
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deathmental-illnessviolence
PseudoPod 828: Taxiptómy is a PseudoPod original. Mulholland Drive trailer Mulholland Drive ‘No Hay Banda’ scene Taxiptómy [tak-si-toe-mee] From the Greek words Taxis meaning “arrangement” and Ptóma meaning “corpse”. Noun Taxiptómist [tak-si-toe-mist] Noun...
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“We’ve All Gone to the Magic Show” was previously published in Vastarien: Vol.3, Issue 1 by Grimscribe Press. Earlier this summer, word spread around our town that the Magic Show’s doors were open. Swollen and stained timbers that once barred the entrance...
PseudoPod 831: Idomeneja is a PseudoPod original. From the author: “The speculative elements from this story are based on the death masks found in the grave circles at the site at Mycenae. I have taken serious artistic liberties with the archaeology and...
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Author : Gwynne Garfinkle Narrator : Alethea Kontis Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in GigaNotoSaurus (March 2020) Contains cursing and discussions of sex. A Wild Patience (Part 1 of 3) by Gwynne...
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misogynysexual-content
Author : Gwynne Garfinkle Narrator : Alethea Kontis Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in GigaNotoSaurus (March 2020) A Wild Patience (Part 2 of 3) by Gwynne Garfinkle The next day, school was in an...
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abusemisogyny
Author : Gwynne Garfinkle Narrator : Alethea Kontis Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in GigaNotoSaurus (March 2020) Contains cursing and discussions of sex. A Wild Patience (Part 3 of 3) by Gwynne...
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abuseviolence
Tloque Nahuaque By Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas, translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. —Carl Sagan I—The Particle Accelerator They built an underground temple. A well of Babel...
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cannibalismchild-deathsuicide
Death, the Universe, and Everything By Sherin Nicole The morning after it happened for the first time, I-- I’m not sure if I should tell you, but maybe you can tell me. If your understanding of reality fundamentally changes, does it change you? And how...
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Open 27 Hours By L.P. Kindred “It had pops of habanero-like spice immediately calmed by the subdued dulce of roast sweet potato. You got lemony shots of citric acid alongside amandine crunches. The dish was studded with cubes of meat I was too young to...
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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...
Heard, Half-Heard, in the Stillness By Iona Datt Sharma Ekta’s Dadi could tell the future. She didn’t read the tea leaves, or make or lay bets on the cricket. But she booked the photographer the week before the news came of Purnima Didi’s engagement. She...
Mathematical Revelations By Helen De Cruz I have never had a Mathematical Revelation in my life. I am presently thirty-eight years and three months old; the first strands of gray have made their hesitant debut in my dark brown hair. I have been a Priestess...
Author : Hamilton Perez Narrator : Karen Menzel (née Bovenmyer) Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published by The Dark. Rated R. Our Mortal Undressing by Hamilton Perez I. Discovery I suppose I’m...
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deathgoresexual-content
Author : Dustin Steinacker Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Originally published by Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. Content warnings: death, animated corpses, violence...
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deathviolencewar
Author : Dustin Steinacker Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Originally published by Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. death, animated corpses, violence against children...
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child-deathdeathviolence
Author : Matt Dovey Narrator : Matthew James Hamblin Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums PodCastle 667: Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky is a PodCastle original. Content warning: death, grief Rated PG-13. Clouds in a...
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Authors : C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez Narrators : C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Originally published in Clockwork Phoenix. Content warning: illness and death Rated...
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Authors : Jenn Reese, Kate Heartfield and John Wiswell Narrators : Tina Connolly, Kim Rogers and C. L. Clark Host : Ziv Wities Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh “A Mindreader’s Guide to Surviving Your First Year at the All-Girls Superhero Academy”...
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Author : Josh Rountree Narrator : Peter Adrian Behravesh Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published in the Eighteen anthology from Underland Press. Rated PG-13. Rated PG-13. Rewind By Josh Rountree...
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suicide
Author : E. Catherine Tobler Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published in No Shit, There I Was (2017), an anthology edited by Alex Acks Rated PG-13. Blush Response by E....
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sexual-contentviolence
Author : Dan Micklethwaite Narrator : Matt Dovey Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published by NewMyths. Rated PG-13. Once and Future Dan Micklethwaite Early mornings, before the tourists show up,...
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Author : Teresa Milbrodt Narrator : Alexis Goble Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published in Guernica in 2015 Bombings, and the offscreen death of children. Rated PG-13. In the Dim Below by...
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body-horrorchild-deathwar
Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Tina Connolly Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published by Daily Science Fiction Rated PG In September by Aimee Ogden On a humid night in mid-July, Emily can’t...
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Author : Louis Evans Narrator : Dave Robison Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Translunar Travelers Lounge Sexual content Rated R Everybody’s Got a Hungry Heart by Louis Evans Agent Heartbreak and the Misery...
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sexual-contentviolence
Author : Melody Gordon Narrator : Cherrae L. Stuart Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums FIYAH Literary Magazine Content warning for racism, oppression, and intergenerational trauma. Rated PG-13 Excavate by...
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racismsexual-violenceslavery
Author : Tashan Mehta Narrator : Suna Dasi Host : Eleanor R. Wood Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published in Magical Women, an Indian speculative fiction feminist anthology, published by Hachette India Rated PG Novel...
Authors : Eisuke Aikawa and Toshiya Kamei Narrator : Miyuki Jane Pinckard Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published by Samovar Rated PG Hummingbird by Eisuke Aikawa and Toshiya Kamei The...
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mental-illness
Author : Gary McKay Narrator : Sarah McGowan Host : Shingai Njeri Kagunda Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Originally published in Underneath the Tree: Twelve Christmas stories from Writers in Northern Ireland Rated PG Candy Canes,...
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"People often spoke about hearing voices: commands, cajoling, or observations made by a chorus of individuals, a collective. But for Sam, it was always just one voice. It had sounded vaguely like her mother’s, and as she fought her way through girlhood and...
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death-of-a-loved-onemental-illness