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
Trauma
642 free-to-read stories tagged “Trauma”
"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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
body-horrorchild-deathdeathviolence
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
Following a disaster in Antarctica, MacReady spends summer 1983 in New York and starts to wonder what he might have brought back with him.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-useviolence
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
Rhye a bitter ex-supersoldier, fights to rescue Rack, her hacker partner in crime, after the criminals they're working for kill Rack's body while his mind is in cyberspace.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
The town barely survives the vicious weather because of the young people who turn into “weathermen,” leaving their families behind.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
AirBody is like AirB&B except you rent out your body, not your home. Arsalan doesn’t expect any trouble from a middle-aged Pakistani woman, but everything she does reminds him of lost opportunities in his own past.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
Lady Ida's visit to Venus was memorialized by the beautiful floral papercuts she made there, but this sensational story reveals the secret of the real purpose of her visit.
Content warnings 4
deathsubstance-useviolencewar
In this provocative and rich retelling of the Greek myth, Orpheus, the musician son of Apollo and Calliope, successfully rescues his wife Eurydice from Hades after her untimely death.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
Zanna settles into a remote mountain cabin to write her next book. No internet. No phone. No distractions.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
The crew of the new Mars mission are coming to the hotel where Emily works, and her mom is starting to say strange things about her involvement with the last Mars mission.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
In which we learn how the new court magician was recruited and find out how even a “market rat” can qualify. We learn that there is real magic, but it comes with a price.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
The girl he killed was much more than merely human, and there will be consequences.
Content warnings 4
deathmisogynysexual-violenceviolence
A young hustler discovers that he's supposed to play a big role in transforming New York from a city to a City. If he can survive it.
Content warnings 3
deathracismviolence
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
The vampires aren’t even the worst part about being a teenage trans girl on tumblr.
Content warnings 9
abusechild-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onegoremisogynysexual-violencesubstance-usetransphobiaviolence
In 1943 India, during the Bengal Famine, the Governor of Bengal tries to force an old woman to make a doll for his wife.
Content warnings 5
child-deathdeathracismviolencewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
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
"Once a decade, a titanium-nosed shuttle plows through the rings of the planet Tartarus with a new batch of prisoners destined for the Orpheus Factory. The debris that makes up the rings is so thick that it thunders like a hailstorm, deafening the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"At first I thought something had broken in my book. I didn’t notice until the afternoon light from the windows began to recede. I tried to increase the brightness settings of the page, but no matter how I thumbed the margins, they would not change. For...
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-useviolence
"The tenth time Jakey broke the rules, he put a sandwich in the mailbox where the window boy could get it. Mom had taken her sleep-quick pills and gone to bed after dinner, on account of her headaches. And Dad was dozing in front of the TV, chin on his...
Content warnings 5
abusebody-horrorchild-abusedeathviolence
"Everything Anton owns goes in one black trash bag. His ratty yellow sketchpad, which he bought to draw the other familiars when he moved here, and only ever used three pages of. The few shirts and khakis that he paid for with his own money, before Mr....
Content warnings 3
abusesuicideviolence
An enhanced chimp and her human partner investigate an apparently pointless murder committed by a woman who was under remote control from an unknown source.
Content warnings 5
abusebody-horrordeathsuicideviolence
Fourteen-year-old Ghost gave up on finding a foster family a long time ago. She’s just waiting until she turns 18 and can leave “the Agency.” Then a new girl turns up—one who can actually remember her life before she was sent there.
Content warnings 6
abusebody-horrorchild-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
"1926 Washington, D.C. Shaw District “There’s a man on the front stoop.” The words spilled from her in a much more mundane way than Judy had expected, considering how her neck was fluttering with her excited pulse. Alvin looked up from the new Langston...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"It was half past midnight when Olga heard the Devil cry. They were supposed to be wild tonight, the three of them. Cassandra had led the way and Maria and Olga didn’t put up much of a fight. They would visit the Devil’s bridge—anything that claimed to be...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"There’s a woman outside of a town called Sheridan, where the sky comes so near to earth it has to use the crosswalk just like everybody else. … There’s a woman outside of Sheridan and she is eating the sin of America."
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Long ago, Sylvie turned herself into a tree to avoid rape, but she wonders if there might not be a better way.
Content warnings 3
sexual-violencesuicideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 7
abusebody-horrordeathgoreracismsexual-violenceviolence
Lola (aka Eliza) has had problems dealing with people ever since she was a child, but she's always been good with snakes.
Content warnings 6
abusechild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathsexual-contentsubstance-use
As the Cold War stalls and the threat of nuclear warfare dominates the news, small-town misfits Laurie and Fell bond over a shared love of music and the mystery of the erratic radio messages that hint at the existence of a future worth reaching out for.
In this spell-binding tale, a Pakistani storyteller captivates a group of wide-eyed tourists with a nesting doll of interlocked stories about a trickster and a hidden city ruled by the Queen of Red Midnight.
Content warnings 4
abusebody-horrorchild-deathviolence
When her master dies in the American Civil War, a teen-age slave girl murders the rest of his family to gain her freedom, but she unwittingly opens a door to the spirit world, and she has to deal with the thing that comes through.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathgoreslaveryviolence
In 1888 a woman suffering a hideous deformity was murdered in London. Today, her descendent wants to find the culprit.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
The crew of the Themis colony write home about their struggles with a mission and a world that seems to be more than a little off.
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssubstance-use
A woman about to leave on an overseas business trip, calls home from the airport and discovers that “daddy” isn’t there and her six-year-old son is all alone in the dark…
Content warnings 1
abuse
"When Mark told you he was marrying your clone, you said “congratulations” on autopilot, because that’s what you say when your friend tells you they’re getting married, and you had promised to stay friendly after the divorce. You studied his face, his...
Content warnings 1
child-abuse
June’s sister Wanda suffered some kind of brain damage in an experiment aimed at learning the nature of reality. Two other people died in that experiment, and June would like some answers.
Content warnings 1
death
Only one nation has nuclear weapons, but their rules against using them require that things be so desperate that the President be willing to kill a child to get the launch codes.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Technically dead after a terrorist attack, Asante gets a new body and second chance at life, provided he serves 5 years as an experimental supersoldier.
Content warnings 3
child-deathviolencewar
"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
"There is no limit to the number of curses in the world. For each one the monks try to exorcise, ten more take its place. We are not here because we enjoy it though. Please don’t misunderstand. As you dip into steaming bath waters, entwine your bodies...
Content warnings 4
cannibalismsexual-violencesuicideviolence
A two-person crew embark on a mind-bending deep space mission inside a living wormship capable of burrowing through space. What lies on the other end is unknown—as is what they will do once they get there.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
"Thuận Lộc stared at the cup. It was dark, and mottled with the characteristic patterning of silver-eye fungus. The tea inside was trembling—the faint vibrations from the Mausoleum, the dead ships’ atrophied motors that would never again allow them to...
Content warnings 2
child-abuseviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 5
deathmental-illnesssexual-violencesubstance-useviolence
Stick was made to pilot Phoenix in the war against the apostates. Stick never feels entirely human, but the final battle approaches, and Stick looks forward to it.
Content warnings 4
abusedeathviolencewar
Whenever the captain dies, the new captain inherits his/her memories back to the start of the mission, but only the good ones; the sin eater gets the bad ones.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
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
Helen comes to Meersee in Germany to be a governess for her friend’s nephew. The child is young and peculiar, the staff are old and peculiar, and more peculiar things turn up by the minute.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 5
body-horrorchild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In 2001, just before the attacks, a girl out West has a very close encounter with space aliens.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathgoresexual-violenceviolence
It’s been two years since Jenna’s ex-boyfriend left her alone in East Texas heartbroken. Now he’s back in town and she wants to payback. One night, she stumbles upon a bloodthirsty Camaro that may be the key to carrying out her revenge.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
All its life, a small monster with emerald scales has been a source of never-ending food to larger and more powerful creatures who feast on the small monster’s limbs each time one regrows. This is the story of how the small monster meets an industrious...
Content warnings 4
abusebody-horrorchild-abuseviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathhomophobiasuicide
In mid-winter, a skeletal stag comes to the village begging for food, but it eats anyone foolish enough to talk to it.
Content warnings 4
body-horrorcannibalismdeathviolence
She wants to get out of Hell, but all the boys she has in mind keep letting her down.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
child-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesuicideviolence
"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
"Episode 60 Transcription by @jbutler22 0:01 Murray: Hey there, I’m Dean Murray and this is a special episode of Homewrecker. We’re on the road this week, heading up to historic [garbled] where we’ll venture [garbled] outside the city to see the colonial...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"i am a memory. i am an METI carrying a memory. i am an METI (Message to Extraterrestrial Intelligence) carrying a memory beaming through the vacuum of space. Because i am an METI, i presume my purpose is to communicate with extraterrestrials, should i find them."
Content warnings 2
deathwar
A photographer’s obsession with an unsettled subject exposes two friends to a darkness that won’t be contained by frames…
Content warnings 3
child-deathsuicideviolence
"When Peng opens the door, he finds himself face to face with a boy who looks exactly like himself. The other Peng stands in the doorway, as though surprised to have been caught. Two eyes peering out from the dark. Fluffy black hair, messy enough to stand...
Content warnings 4
animal-harmchild-abusedeathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneself-harm
Anna’s an AI expert who’s called in to figure out what a new upgrade is causing AI-captained ships to destroy themselves.
Content warnings 1
death
"Big Edie was a useless piece of shit. Johanna Telle found the most significant relationship of her life on a Saturday afternoon in late May, sitting on one of those excruciatingly handmade quilts crafty stay-at-homes used to make out of their precious...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
In a future Canada, a woman talks to her political-prisoner mother but wonders if it’s just an AI simulation of her.
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicmental-illness
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
A young hockey player charged with murder on the moon seeks asylum on Earth, but unhappy Lunarians are trying to find him.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathmental-illnessviolence
Mebuyen doesn’t get many lost souls anymore—modern Filipinos have moved on—so when a bunch of young people start showing up whom she can’t send along, it’s time to visit the Earth and learn what’s going on.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
Coop is eager to make a difference in his first mission as a new lieutenant on a search-and-rescue ship, but the rest of the crew doesn’t seem to work very hard or care very much, and they definitely don’t appreciate his meddling.
In 12th-Century England, six-year-old Ada flees the vicious reptilian wastoures who swam the countryside eating people and animals alike.
Content warnings 4
body-horrorchild-abusedeathviolence
The soprano playing Liù keeps trying to change the opera’s gruesome plot, starting with her own death scene.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
Ten-year-old Polly wishes she could see fairies like her friend Isabelle can. She wishes a lot of things. Not all wishes should come true.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
Magical Girl Antifa War Machine By Esther Alter XYLIA We were at the bottom of a hole, a new construction site that went deep into the bedrock. I was the first to touch the artifact, a thing that didn’t quite have shape or color. I grabbed it. My new...
Content warnings 5
deathgoresexual-contentviolencewar
"Jay scrubs at the blood spot on her tennis shoe with her thumb and a gob of spit, hurried by the knowledge that Hardy will be there any moment. It’s swelter-hot on the gravel back road, and she’s doused in the sound of cicadas from the forest behind her...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"We used to cage them in the tide pools, when they were still small enough to capture in our little hands. Pull them out and snap photos that we could pretend to sell to magazines just like Papa. Them, gasping for breath, unable to see, fins fluttering. We...
Content warnings 4
abusebody-horrordeathviolence
"One hundred and eighty days. Today was it—the longest Annie had ever managed to stay at one job. The last time she had texted Charlie, it was to tell her “Charlie” was the name of a bomb and “Annie” was the name of another—this hadn’t gone as well as she...
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
The survivor of an apocalypse event in an alternate universe tries to rebuild and avoid being dragged back into the past when a visitor crosses the in-between and asks for help.
A woman visiting Las Vegas for a fun weekend encounters her ne’er-do-well ex-husband, who begs her for a favor that gambles with life and death…
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusegenocideviolence
"I was kinda worried about being the new kid, but apparently new kids are cool here. This guy named Scott Marsh who seems pretty popular and has a good jump shot was really nice to me, so the other guys were nice to me, too. I think maybe because me and...
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abuseviolence
"Alice wants to hold a funeral for me, which is disconcerting because I’m not dead. But humans, like all aliens—and certainly all single-forms—have their own idiosyncrasies. I’m used to the idiosyncrasies, of course: I’ve lived on Earth—in my tertiary...
Content warnings 1
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"Rugg the spellbreaker was only passing through the Devil’s Palm on his way down to the coast, where he hoped to find his mother. He’d have avoided Ganvill, except he was running low on boom powder and salt, and the little settlement was the last tame...
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
The sister of an abducted child is haunted by a sinister figure who may or may not be real…
"There’s a dog in this house. A not-quite-a-dog. An undog. I heard its whimpering the first week I slept here, the thump, thump, thump of its bulky legs on the old tiles. I found long brown hair mixed with dust bunnies where the walls met. When there’s a...
Content warnings 2
abuseanimal-harm
"A hoodie is what a Soucouyant give birth to when she trick a Midnight Robber.” Or so Rose calls herself. Passed off to orphanages. No idea who her mother and father were. Didn’t know the source of herself. Because she wasn’t given a proper foundation to...
Content warnings 1
suicide
"You don’t look Sweetbaby in the eye when he pushes out from under the tree throw. We know that now. Instead, the ears, or what’s left of them, are a better place to settle your gaze. They’re close enough to the face that you can tell which way he’s...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"If you’re looking for a cheap way to kill all this mold—and who isn’t, right now—look no further than Inkicide Disinfectant Concentrate 64oz (4 Bottles). It’ll curl your nose hairs right up into your skull, but that just means it’s working, amirite? Two...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesswar
Allie and Rooster are heading down to Asheville for Rooster’s new gig, a cushy stint as artist-in-residence at UNC. ... But when they stumble upon an old backcountry church—the perfect backdrop for Rooster’s latest project—they discover that some...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"A girl has lost her soul down deep in the City. It wandered away while she chipped out another grave in the catacomb brickyards. She set down her pickax, wiped grit from her cheek, and noticed how empty her body was. Looked down at her wrist and found it blank."
Content warnings 2
self-harmviolence
"Joy nearly got lost on the root-knotted red dirt path off of Highway 99, losing sight of the gaps between the live oaks and Spanish moss that fanned across her hood and windows like fingertips. Driving back to her family’s cabin twenty years later...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Beni’s a drag queen who reads minds, and he’s shopping for a new dress and the story that goes with it.
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusepregnancy-loss
"Charlie wasn’t a ghost standing in the corners of the house, but at the same time he was everywhere. He had been haunting my thoughts since we received Uncle Jamey’s emails and the plane tickets. Now, everyone gathered at our mother’s house, my childhood...
Content warnings 5
deathracismsubstance-usesuicideviolence
After watching a make eat her mother, Malatina isn’t sure she wants one anywhere near her web, but she’s lonely, and so she responds to a very unusual arachnipede who seems to be lonely too.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
A soldier wracked with guilt about his actions in the war leaps at a chance to do something to end war forever.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsubstance-useviolence
With tremendous powers of regeneration, Mars is an incomparable killing machine, but he’s on the run, and there’s one special prisoner he’s determined to rescue.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
Draiken and Thorne seek out a torturer they once knew in hopes he can lead them to surviving leaders of the organizations they once worked for but are now sworn to destroy.
Content warnings 1
abuse
After 700 years of isolation, the colony faces invasion from fellow humans. Fleeing from the destruction of her home town, Senne hooks up with four soldiers trying to find what’s left of their unit.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathsexual-violenceviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-abusechild-deathsexual-violence
On a cold October midnight, teenage Susanna takes her dog and a musket and sneaks away into the woods. Things happened ten years ago when she got the dog. Bad things. And now the reckoning is due.
Content warnings 3
animal-harmchild-deathviolence
An Australian detective investigates a woman who apparently killed her husband and children before disappearing.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
A disabled human veteran takes in a disabled AI veteran. The AI doesn't talk anymore due to trauma, but Tawn tries to get through to it, even though his mother thinks it's dangerous.
Content warnings 1
war
A woman appears to be helping a child recover from some form of brain damage. His perceptions and memory are off, but something is off about her too.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrormental-illness
Perihelion and its crew embark on a dangerous new mission at a corporate-controlled station in the throes of a hostile takeover…
Content warnings 2
child-abuseviolence
"November 1938 “What we are looking for,” said the doctor, “are photographs to help us document the treatment’s effect upon the patient. We need a picture before the treatment and afterward. Those are for the hospital files. But we also want photos taken...
Content warnings 3
homophobiamental-illnessviolence
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
"No signs protect the backyards in this part of town from the Marl Pits Forest. There’s no treeline either. Of course there isn’t. But even in the dark, you can’t really miss where the forest starts—not if you’ve lived a childhood in the wilderness here...
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"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
"Pusetso’s research assistant lay in pieces on the floor with his head between his chest, back open, cracked solar panels splayed on the office table. A mess of tangled multicolored wires dangled from the bottom of his torso—rainbow innards. His legs, the...
Content warnings 1
violence
A private eye plagued by hallucinations is hired to retrieve a mummified monk’s head stolen from a cathedral–but why would someone want it?
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
"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
A university student seeks special accommodations for her new support animal, causing havoc all around her.
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
"When they ordered me down off my pedestal, I had nowhere else to go. Life as a statue is easy. They make you ascend the pedestal, turn you to stone, remove your ability to move, and leave you to watch the turn of the seasons in a world you cannot touch or...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
"Sergey hummed under his breath as he walked to the Marith temple. His steps retraced a path he knew so well, he could have walked it at night, in the dark, even under assault. Yet the Marith enclave was the most peaceful place he’d ever been—so calm that...
Content warnings 3
child-deathviolencewar
"You ready?” asked the first man, his face pockmarked, lips leering, eyes sullen. “Light’em up,” replied the second. The third nodded his head and produced the gasoline. They knew the children slept inside. No one had to tell them. The Freedmen’s School in...
Content warnings 3
child-deathracismviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneracismviolence
"Besides the vedma who lived behind the stove in steam room three, the banya in Grand Lake Plaza was the same as any other budget day spa on Chicago’s West Side. It had deep-tissue massages and signature facials, plus day passes for the communal baths and...
Content warnings 3
abusesexual-violenceviolence
"Once upon a time, in that place right near to us, there lived a man and a woman, together as man and wife, though, like most peasants, no one had married them nor given them any word. It was simply that their love for each other was stronger even than...
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abuseviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"I’ve got a signal,” Cora said. “Elena, come look!” I rushed to Cora’s bank of computers. For six long, working-into-the-evening days, we’d gotten only the faintest of quantum signals, nothing usable. Our grant only gave us three weeks on the TU Delft...
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
"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
"By the time I hear that my brother is looking for me, and has somehow scraped together enough credit to get on a commercial flight to New Tel Aviv, and that he’s also brought his three-year-old daughter on her first interplanet trip, my insides are...
Content warnings 3
deathsubstance-useviolence
"I know a nanomask when I see one, especially when the wearer’s making eye contact. There’s something about how the mask melds around the lids — it’s just a little bit stiff, but you have to really know what you’re looking for to tell. But people in...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"The golden woman is a prisoner trapped in a straight-backed chair. She has been paralyzed by artificial means, reduced to a temporary quadriplegic by a device affixed to the back of her neck. She has been stripped to her undergarments and left only enough...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Sequoia and her friends hate their overcontrolled world, where four generations have only been allowed a single child, making teens rare and coddled.
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-useviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorwar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorchild-abuse
The narrator undergoes a special treatment that lets her revisit (and change) key memories that trouble her—all of which involve people she had sex with.
Content warnings 3
sexual-contentsexual-violencesubstance-use
Jorren gets a dangerous commission for magical clothes. One that might let her recover much of what she lost when she fell out of favor decades ago, but only if she can figure it out. And survive it.
In 2028, Kitty has a role in a play about a mass murder committed in 1978, but when she visits the setting of the crime, she’ll pulled into the past right before the crimes take place.
Content warnings 3
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnessviolence
On the eve of World War II, five years after King Kong’s death, a young New York taxi driver meets Ann Darrow and learns they have something in common.
Content warnings 1
racism
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
sexual-contentsexual-violence
Attacked by endless flocks of ravens, the Bjebu people flee their village to a strange place controlled by a strange god, who grants them safety in exchange for “three offerings of sorrow.”
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Since her cancer, Sydney has just been drifting through life, but when she lets a friend move in, things change in an unexpected way.
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
animal-harmchild-death
Two series meet in this crossover episode where ex-assassin Draiken’s search for justice is interrupted when he’s arrested by ace prosecutor Andrea Cort.
Content warnings 1
violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 6
body-horrorchild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-onesubstance-useviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Ancient nanotech controls a few humans to enforce harsh anti-technology rules on a reluctant population. Colton escaped its control at the cost of losing all emotion, and he struggles to be accepted by a caravan that’s trying to evade some of the restrictions.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
A group of women have been chemically altered to set cities on fire from a distance. Not everyone thinks this is a good idea—including the women themselves.
Content warnings 4
child-deathdeathillness-and-pandemicviolence
The prince’s huntsman finds himself trapped in an abandoned castle, prisoner of a once-human beast.
Content warnings 2
violencewar
As the seas have risen, terrible things have come crawling out of them. Jersey wants Mir to come with him and move inland, but she won’t go without her disabled father.
Content warnings 5
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 8
abusedeathgoreillness-and-pandemicsexual-contentsubstance-usesuicideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 5
body-horrorcannibalismdeathgoreviolence
A dead woman sees her doppelgänger watching over her remains and wonders what she's up to.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
Eleven years ago, the Blue-Lily plague devastated the Empire. Now Yen Oanh attends to unfinished business with a dead mind-ship and a living survivor.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicviolence
"A scream rises from the bush. One last call to the living: a warning of pain. Katarina’s heard that same sound more times than she’s had hot dinners but still a ribbon of unease unfurls in her gut. She sets her cleaver down for a moment, shifting from one...
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeathviolence
"The apartment is dark when I return, the blackout curtains doing their job of keeping the late afternoon sun out. It doesn’t matter, though. The air is stifling hot, thick and oppressive. Sweat gathers on my skin, sticking clothes to flesh. But I welcome...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"For a long time now I’d been practicing liecraft five or six times before breakfast. I’d roll over to Khao’s side of the bed and murmur through the curls of hair winding around his ear: “Go back to sleep, it’s only just daybreak.” Other times I’d hide his...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-abuseviolence
"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...
"Licensed psychologists follow a set of ethical standards enforceable by law. Don’t fuck your patients, commit no felonies, refer out if you don’t know what to do, stuff like that. Then there are aspirational principles. More like ideals, inspiring better...
PseudoPod 963: Mavka is a PseudoPod original. CW: cannibalism, suicide, starvation, use of second person perspective You pray to forget this. You pray to forget the cold. Even under two wool blankets you’re always cold now. Skin and bones, you. A February...
Content warnings 3
cannibalismchild-deathsuicide
"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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"After we kill our father but before we leave the island, we argue. Cal doesn’t want to go; he’s afraid of the water. Even after the rest of us outvote him two to one, he refuses to move, crouching on the ground, pressing the ruined side of his face into...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"We drove out to Joshua Tree for the star party—a gathering of amateur astronomers under a clear, dark sky. It was Holly’s idea, an impromptu adventure on a Friday after work: “Hey, Lou, do you want to go look at the moon tonight?” Holly had the best ideas...
Content warnings 2
child-deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrordeath
"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...
A comatose patient undergoes an experimental procedure that uses favorite childhood stories to pull the patient back into consciousness—but the experiment doesn’t go quite as planned…
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"We were waiting for the sunset, sitting on the porch of the bleak stone house that was filled up with our longing. The sky was empty. The air, when I sniffed, was cold and bleak. There were no clouds, and we knew it might be a night when we’d see what we...
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-onesuicidewar
"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
"Folake Adeyemi was slowly digging her index finger into the base of her afro and staring at the row of remote subsurface exploration monitoring screens when she heard the explosion. She’d let her mind wander for a few moments, subconsciously clenching her...
Content warnings 1
death
"Long before you came along, I was myself just a seed in Raffa’s pocket, something she fumbled with as she stepped on the plane, her other hand clutching her mother’s. Small as I was, I sensed her fear. I tried to hum reassuringly. Above the ocean, I...
Content warnings 2
abusedeath-of-a-loved-one
"I walk into Old Town. In a curio shop on the promenade, an old man sells paintings, deras, kikois, and ornaments. Tuk-tuks move swiftly along the cabro paving, passing the teapot sculpture at the round-about. Pushcarts lumber beside the street restaurants...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathwar
"The 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 little girl was blonde and had very blue eyes. She stood on the steps to the house and stared at Mara without expression. “It lives in the closet,” the little girl said. “Klara…” her father said. He looked apologetically at Mara. “Please,” he said....
"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...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-abuseself-harmsexual-violence
"Elizabeth is the first person to notice I’m inside her. “Tell me how to do it,” she whispers. It’s a shock. No one has spoken to me directly in ages. I’m nothing more than a whisper when I slip beneath her skin. I’m less than a breath. I should be...
Content warnings 3
body-horrormental-illnessself-harm
A series of interviews between a young, clean-cut journalist and an alternative, independent pichal pairi turns into an unexpected romance. But their relationship is tested when the entire world around them shuts down.
"The first thing I asked, when the mage-king gave me a mouth, was whether he had given me a soul. His people’s beloved king, who held back the lords of the undead when they came roving; by whose conquering hand the strongholds were fed in the long fallow...
Content warnings 3
abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
Author : Leah Ning Narrator : Graeme Dunlop Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums PodCastle 679: Pull is a PodCastle original. A content warning for end of life care. Rated PG-13 with a content warning for end of...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmdeathillness-and-pandemic
"When Jenea and I sneak out to the observation deck of the SSE Patroclus after lights-out, I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he waits until I’m distracted by the stars and tells me he set himself on fire. I tear my gaze from the outer edges of the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorself-harmwar
"I hate Original Diana immediately, or at least I want to hate her. Nothing should surprise me about her appearance, yet I’m embarrassed to be excited to look like her when I’m in my forties. My cheeks get hot when I think about how I held out a shred of...
Content warnings 1
abuse
"The oval fruit, uneven on all sides even when it’s ripe, is not just for eating. Spaces in the dust roads filled with reddish-brown wind are what she sees in her lost childhood. Jolainne wants to tell you, to tell anyone who’ll listen, of hiding in the...
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusesexual-violence
"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
"Here’s the thing you need to know to understand this story: I was meant to be an only child. The doctors, when they examined my mother, only counted one heartbeat. One. Me. I don’t know when my sister came along. My mother, so ready to accept, so...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"When Elisabeth takes the baby to the beach on Thursday afternoon, another shambler has got through the fence. “Stay ten meters back,” the guard says, his translucent face mask fogged with the heat. “Yes, yes,” Elisabeth says. “And the child. Ten meters.”...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath
"They say the universe was created when a Giant lit a matchstick. That her great sigh fanned the flames that danced and wept into stars and constellations. They say some seas are blue and Slugs are naturally submissive. They also say that I cannot exist....
Content warnings 1
child-death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusesexual-violence
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
"The first time Rang died, it stopped a typhoon. The typhoon raged at the entire Orphan Cousin enclave. Torrents rolled in for hours, swallowing the harbor in foam and brine, dashing fishing trawlers against the shore. Storage houses were dragged into the...
Content warnings 3
deathself-harmsuicide
"Adam is washing his hands when it happens again. First the water pouring out of the faucet becomes icy cold seafoam. Then the porcelain bottom of the sink dissolves, making him flinch backward. The bathroom’s tiled floor is intact; the mirrored medicine...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorhomophobiaself-harm
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath
Junior went out to fix one of the company’s holographic Jesuses that had started cursing. He knew he wasn’t supposed to get in a religious argument with the old lady, but she was very insistent.
Content warnings 2
abusesexual-violence
As Charlotte’s husband sinks into early Alzheimer’s, he becomes more and more obsessed with a cult religious figure known only as The Reverend.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
sexual-violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
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
A songwriter and her boyfriend seclude themselves at his old family cabin back in the woods to work on a new album. But in the isolation, she has trouble getting work done, and reality itself seems a little off.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Ten years ago, all the members of the IRIS band died in an accident, and Ruriko blames herself. She keeps visiting robot constructed with the personalities of the band members hoping to find absolution.
Content warnings 2
deathself-harm
On planet Skale, the seasons are three years long, and as winter ends, Jadey finds that spring brings real challenges to the ranch she works on.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-abusechild-deathviolence
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
An alien brain transplanted into a human child’s body serves as an involuntary translator. It’s not supposed to have volition or memories, but things don’t always work as advertised.
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
Snow White’s life with the prince isn’t going so well, and her wicked stepmother—now a prisoner—seems determined to torment her about it.
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeathviolence
Jared has almost brought the princess to safety, but he worries that Kat, the crazy women who accompanies them, might have betrayed them.
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
Sam is a talented hacker who extracts Jane’s personal info in order to seduce her.
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
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
In 1915 Ohio, 14-year-old Emmett's night terrors get worse after he finds a dead body in an abandoned well.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Dear Francesca, First off: I know that’s not your name. I haven’t gone and mistaken you for another woman—one of my many conquests, I imagine you imagine (what must imaginary you think of imaginary me?). You’ll notice, if you glance ahead, that I’ve...
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
"High above the Amazon Rainforest, Hynd circled, her massive wingspan only visible by the shadow she cast on the battlefield below. She felt the wind pass across her wings, whispering of torrential rain coming; not her concern, so far above the clouds, but...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorviolencewar
"Wendy knew it wouldn’t be long now before her daughter was taken. She had put the idea from her mind as long as she could, but now Jane was days away from turning thirteen. From the window of the nursery, Wendy saw Jane wobbling her way down Kensington...
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
A traumatized time traveler keeps traveling back to his past to punish his younger self. Over multiple loops, he learns to forgive himself. Copyright khōréō magazine 2025. Story by Samir Sirk Morató, edited by Danai Christopoulou. Audio edition read by...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseself-harmviolence
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
Two ex-military nurses, one human and one alien, share a friendship in a city following an alien invasion.
Content warnings 3
racismviolencewar
"You ever love a place more than people? Mama Patch’s house held me and all my running and snooping without ever forcing me to slow down or stay put. I could run from the rafters down the bang-bang spiral case, then sideways through the six rooms of...
Content warnings 3
homophobiasexual-violenceviolence
"My ghost bled through the shadows, an icy wind stirring the leaves. Eyes like candle flames shuddering and crescent moon mouth, it had found me as a girl and never let go—the only thing that was really mine. It led me to an overgrown graveyard, pelts of...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
"The men knew before she did. Before this boy, before sophomore year, before even her twelfth birthday, they had jostled her on the sidewalk and hooted from cars, searching for something just past her skin. But now, with her panties stripped off and the...
Content warnings 3
goresexual-violenceviolence
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
gorehomophobiaviolence
"The first time through this cycle, Devaki does not believe he will go through with it. Kasma is her brother, after all, and for all his fears, he didn’t kill her when he had the chance. So as her baby grows inside her, the first fruit of her marriage to...
Content warnings 3
child-deathpregnancy-losssuicide
"The Starsinger, the Starsinger, the Starsinger, he sings. His histories have long been recorded—in every pit stop he has visited. In every station he has stayed. It may be just a minute of the traffickers slapping the Bini out of his mouth, or them...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseslaverysuicide
"Itsy bitsy,” whispers the girl in the glass tank beside mine. Not a girl anymore, not really, but it’s better for my sanity to pretend she’s still human. That we both are. We had names once—and skin, soft to the touch. In the sterile, blinding white...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
A child who falls through the cracks in a world run by machines and politics, might be the savior of all humanity…
Content warnings 2
substance-usewar
"Police detective Hector Kovack couldn’t take the bullet back. He lay in the gray, predawn ooze of a hungover Martian Tuesday morning, twisting the thought with all his might. Or trying. Drunk, hungover or sober, the truth wouldn’t twist. No matter how...
Content warnings 2
substance-useviolence
"Hey cuz! It’s been too long. Love to come out and see your digs. The message hung in the air, glimmering in her Heads Up Display overlaid across the moss garden she was tending. The chill that swept over Euryale made the hair on her arms stand on end and...
Content warnings 2
deathsexual-violence
"Good stone, like water, wrought truce by necessity. Here, the river became a waterfall and ate the earth like honeycomb. Here, teardrops of flint washed up at a stone knapper’s feet. Bands of every people in the vastness of the world came for the stone....
Content warnings 3
animal-harmgoreviolence
"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
"A woman drags a white doe out of the ice room; it hangs from the ceiling rails by two brass hooks, one caught beneath its pelvis and the other behind the scapulae. As she pulls, the metal wheels whine. When she works in her lab, she is a butcher. She lays...
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorgore
"I spent my first summer as an orphan watching cicadas fuck, scream, and molt. Wasn’t long before I plucked one of the cicada skins from the dry village soil. I brushed it clean against my secondhand clothes I was already beginning to outgrow. Dappled by...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoresexual-content
In celebration of the 50th World Fantasy Convention’s Toastmaster, Michael Swanwick, Reactor presents a new Mongolian Wizard story about a battle to save Paris from an unexpected new enemy.
Content warnings 3
goreviolencewar
"You’re not meant to fix what happens in the time loops. Doctor’s orders, and that comes even before they give you the survey and the spiel and the confidentiality speech. The psych fiddles with his tablet in his cozy, yellow-couch office, and talks to you...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"The man in the navy Cosmo Corp suit calls it Self-Reconciliation Therapy, this place they’ve dumped you, where the walls are made of mirrors. But they aren’t mirrors, are they? Sure, you raise a hand, and the woman in the not-mirror waves. God, her...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseself-harmsexual-content
"Even though the armistice has held for nearly a year now, I know it could shatter at any moment, trapping me here behind enemy lines. The war raged for nearly fifty years—the simple inertia of violence dictates a renewal of hostilities sooner or later....
Content warnings 2
violencewar
"I am running out of Words. I stumble down the temple steps, clutching my wounded side. I had been too slow to use my fourth Word and the prison guard’s spear had drawn blood before he choked to death under the weight of my suffocation spell."
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"The Lightning Road cuts far across the Cosmos, a streak of dazzling gold amidst the star-studded void. Paved in otherworldly stone, the road climbs over sleeping giants, past ringed planets and frozen worlds, connecting one unknown to the next. Xiaofei...
Content warnings 1
war
"When Ariana sent word to her birth mother, Scarlett, that they needed to speak, she didn’t really expect a response. Scarlett had abandoned her with her father as a barely weaned infant and only returned when Ariana was twenty. In the few years since,...
Content warnings 1
violence
"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 so dark. Black-orange-bloody-bruised. Flashlights throw long beams across the sand. Police lights flicker blue and red, blue and red, blue and red, and the Ferris wheel on the pier glows an obscene neon. No one thought to turn off the calliope. It...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
On a trip to Italy, a woman stuck in a crumbling relationship discovers the city she loves holds a secret that could change her life…
"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
"My sister Angélique found me on a warm spring night. She was not looking for me but for a doctor who could treat women ridden by hags. (Such creatures were properly called soucouyants, but the printers took such liberties with the spelling in my weekly...
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
"It is part of my process to be both places at once, so that while I am sitting on the stool at your bedside with my segmented fingers plugged into your cerebrum, I am also inside your first memory of walking. In the undamaged parts of your braincase lay...
Content warnings 3
abuseracismviolence
"When I die, I want you to keep my bones.” Vasanthi floats in the dark pool, the softness of her voice punctuated by softer drops of water from stalactites. “You mean your ashes.” The best misunderstandings come from our language differences. “I’ll find...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onewar
"Folks later claimed she was acting strange from the moment she boarded the plane. They described her as skittish, curt, radiating an aura of danger. Some, when confronted with the security footage, which showed her to have behaved rather unremarkably up...
Content warnings 3
child-deathgoreviolence
"Examination rooms are safe. They stay what they are. The memories they drag to the surface make sense. You assume it’s because you’ve been in so many hospital rooms that your brain is packed with too much realism to have space for the random connections...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Azahn had been the ninety-third Imperial Foresight to the Dynasty of Silken Flame for only three weeks when he was forcibly retired. His body had been blessed by the holy waters of the Sky-Vein River, and he had earned the named-blade Stalwart Thy Mind,...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"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
"That dying anchor said some mysterious ‘he’ was looking for her. Chakatie tried to think of who that could be. When she’d been an anchor in charge of her own land, she’d thought she’d been even-handed. But traveling with the day-fellows had revealed to...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"Ambassador Porleth Heng considered herself a blessed woman. Unlike most members of the Confederate Diplomatic Corps, who had indentured themselves to that service out of economic hardship or an ache to escape the terrible conditions on their respective...
Content warnings 2
deathsubstance-use
"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
Chelle’s friend, Wenqian, has everything Chelle doesn’t. A slim figure, pale skin, and most notably the affection of her longtime friend Preston. Like the ocean waves she calls home, Chelle feels transparent and overflowing all at once. So when she’s given...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"Lamia knows hunger. She has known it since the harvests withered, since water stopped falling from the sky, since the animals fled. Even so, she continued living with her family in the cabin on the riverbank. There were four of them: father, mother,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
suicide
"Walking, crossing, moon-kissed streets, black top, blue jeans, unwashed. Her afro is home to a million brown-winged birds, everlastingly chirping. There’s a baby boy, eight months old, asleep in her arms, and maybe he dreams of beautiful spinning...
Content warnings 3
abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
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
PseudoPod 807: The Bleak Communion of Abandoned Things is a PseudoPod original. I accept the house in lieu of a settlement. I don’t want Ashley’s dirty money. The house is the least ill-gotten thing she owns, an isolated property she won in a card game and...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathmental-illness
"On the first floor of a Colonial-style house constructed last century out of planks of old growth cedar, a monster is dragging a woman’s husband from room to room. The specific path this monster takes will be evident the next morning from the gashes in...
Content warnings 2
abusesexual-violence
"I am not an illness. I’m a soul with a goal. Everyone on this floor is here for intrusive thoughts, ideations, risk of harm to themselves or others. What society used to call possession, they now call neurotransmitter imbalance or schizophrenia or...
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusesuicide
A reporter travels to the Norwegian Arctic to cover an unusual sled race with the undead leading the living into unknown territory.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Ninth. It is a few days before your suspicions are confirmed. Perhaps it is the baggy trousers your daughter has started to wear, or that she picks at her food. She will lie if you ask her outright, this you know. You throw her bedroom door open without...
Content warnings 3
misogynypregnancy-losssexual-violence
"During the unbearable years of tyranny, the political prisoners of the Anchorite Hegemony made a solemn covenant: when the time came, they would cross the last miles to freedom on their feet. For reasons of youth and idiocy, Tishrel thought he would have...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"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
"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
Eli is—one hundred percent, without a doubt—vampiro, but he's missing all the stereotypical traits. Is there room for him to exist in a world where everyone has already decided who and what he is? Copyright khōréō magazine 2021. Story by K. Victoria...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseracismviolence
"We met on the 107th floor of the South Tower. She was standing in quiet contemplation, watching fire spread through the building across the plaza, smoke and paper billowing out into that baby blue sky. I was nursing a thunderous hangover, neglecting my...
Content warnings 2
deathwar
"THE FIRST TIME SHE AWOKE on the bus, Adachukwu Ejiofor discovered that her ankles, wrists, and one kneecap had taken their leave of her while she wasn’t looking. She still had the other kneecap and her hands and feet, though, making her disappearance...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"He finds her in his grandpa’s attic, in the Big House. The hatch has been locked up tight since the day Grant Dixon was born—twenty-two years of locked up tight—and long before. He used to ask about it, between the stories his Grandpa Dixon liked to tell. "
Content warnings 3
abuseslaveryviolence
"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
"The ghosts the hollow-eyed girl in Junction Square was selling billowed from her basket in wispy ribbons, whipping and fluttering in wind I could not feel, their tantalizing snap and shudder of cloth lighter than air, heavier than sorrow. I saw her from...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"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
"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
A group of five friends rent a cabin in the woods—the next day only four are alive. What happened and why is something the survivors are desperate to unravel.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorself-harmviolence
"When the doorbell first rings, I do not rise from my chair. It is one of those days when the hurt bends me double. My nerves pulse sharp behind my eyelids; my fingers, clenched around the worn wooden armrests, are full of thorns. But outside the open...
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...
"Ankuin knew she was in a sim by the mineral taste in her mouth. The other tells were more subtle: the fractal pattern of moss on the cave wall, the cyclical rhythm of the rain on wet fronds, and the lyrical birdsong piercing through the dense forest. Most...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"The best way to hide a red mouth is to know exactly when your gums start to bleed. If you check your teeth every so often with a quick swipe of the tongue, and you get a bit of that saltiness, you’ll learn to take a swig from a canteen and rinse before...
Content warnings 1
substance-use
"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...
Years ago, Irem went to the stars, but the results were disappointing, and now she’s trying to settle back into an Istanbul grown strange to her.
In a world where atmospheric problems made guided ICBMs impossible, a young missile pilot talks about his life at base waiting for the call to fly a nuclear missile to his death.
After the AIs won the war, they still found ways to keep humans busy, and Cal’s starship is responsible for finding and evaluating human colonies that were lost during the war.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
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
"They’d built a new Vault of Potions after the flood—of course they’d had to, with the thaumatically cursed mess that had become of the old one. Still, it made me twitch and reach for my wand, walking along the familiar tree-lined quad and hearing the...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
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.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathgore
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abusedeath
Cortez invades a Mexico that has electricity, and he gets help from an unhappy slave girl.
Content warnings 3
deathslaveryviolence
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
A young man enjoys his life in 22nd-Century Canada, but he’s anxious that no one find out he used to be a slave.
Content warnings 1
slavery
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
When Gary catches his girlfriend teleporting, he struggles to convince her to go public about her ability.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
A grieving father tries to recreate the son he lost.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
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 narrator completes an interview to get qualified to communicate with aliens.
A few years ago, the Gray Sun killed millions to silence the subversion of Li Sin’s revolutionary poetry. Li Sin faked their own death to escape, but somehow the Gray Sun learned the truth, and now it hunts again.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
They say the mountain women have “unnatural habits” so when Katrin falls in love with a lowland man, no good can come of it.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
pregnancy-loss
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusesexual-violence
How a knight errant sought a dragon, they fell in love, and she loves it still, despite the fact it set her on fire once.
Kicked out of an elite academy, Suzanne survives on the streets with the help of a mute boy and four reluctant angels. And despite a demon inside her that keeps threatening to break out.
Content warnings 3
child-abuseself-harmsexual-violence
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
Refugees from the destruction of their own planet, the Dragonflies struggle to find a place in a world that doesn’t welcome them.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Rourou is a Chinese little girl who loves her papa but wonders what happened to her momma. And why she can’t remember anything before age 5. And why she speaks fluent English.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
misogynysexual-violenceviolence
Nell left Koohar long ago, but now she’s trying to help the people fleeing from the ruins of the planet.
Content warnings 1
death
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-abusesuicideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
Consumed with guilt for being the sole survivor from her home dimension collapsed, Angel scrapes by in our world, living with a ghost, working as a janitor and doing limited magic on the sly.
Content warnings 1
substance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
An alien-human symbiote tries to sort out complicated feelings at his former friends' wedding. Content warnings: Brief mention of suicide Copyright © 2025 khōréō magazine. Story by Sharang Biswas, edited by Danai Christopoulou. Audio edition read by Eli...
Content warnings 3
sexual-contentsubstance-usewar
"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
"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
"…but what is it like, having a war criminal as your past life?” Sadie Salazar, Licensed Life Speaker, should have been professionally above the prurient interest lighting her hazel eyes, and much too old for the giddy excitement that lifted the corners of...
Content warnings 3
sexual-violencesuicidewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
goretransphobiaviolence
"Children don’t generally assume their father will abandon them to die in the snow. But under certain circumstances, they might get an inkling. If their mother had died the year before, and their father brought home a woman with a sweet voice and cruel...
Content warnings 3
cannibalismchild-deathsexual-content
"Udo Gehler saw his next opponent was the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance and didn’t even blink. He’d been curled up in his personal ARMOR lounge, holo-projecting the replay of his last match frame by frame, noting every instance he’d lost momentum or ceded...
Content warnings 3
sexual-violenceviolencewar
"The girls of our town float down the middle of the street, cheap fabric wings pinned to their clothes. I watch them walk, hobbled by coat hanger curves that refuse to bend with the bow of their backs. I see Min towards the back. She’s been doing this for...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsexual-violencesubstance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathwar
Nothing tears two women apart like the men who want and take indiscriminately. In this retelling of “The Crane Wife”, a makeup artist and her actress lover struggle to stay together as the glitz and glamour of old Hollywood transforms into a cruel and...
Content warnings 3
abusemisogynyviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abusesexual-violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusemisogynyviolence
"Abigail sat at the centermost position at the cafeteria table. For her, it was unintentional. For us, it was by design. Abigail had no idea about the effect she had on people, obviously. It’s a blessing of having seen yourself in every movie, magazine,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorself-harmviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
Don Jacinto flees when he gets a letter from his crazy brother, not wanting to get involved in his quest to wake a supposed sleeping god.
Content warnings 3
goreviolencewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Two little children come to a gingerbread house in the woods. The lady of the house is a witch, but so are the kids, and one of them is already dead anyway. The real problem is the people looking for them.
Content warnings 3
child-abusechild-deathgore
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
goresuicideviolence
Red Riding Hood escapes the wolf after years of living together and finds asylum with Beauty while the Beast is overseas on business.
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
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
Some nights shining lights appear atop hills in urban areas, and people who walk into them disappear—some say to fairyland. A cop who thinks otherwise tries to talk a young woman out of trying it.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Hiding from her own problems, Winona volunteers at the local ornithological museum after she hits a bird with her car.
Content warnings 3
abusedeathracism
When newlyweds Courtney and Josh rent an old Victorian in Baltimore, they're told to stay out of the attic. But they hear noises up there at night. Footsteps.
Content warnings 1
violence
You are a lonely ten-year-old boy living in an old house with your mom when a man claiming to be your uncle arrives and strange things start to happen.
Content warnings 2
abusesubstance-use
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 woman returns to burn the last of her mother's body, in the wake of her mother's death — an effort to escape a dark entity that has sealed itself to the bones of three generations of Thai women. Content warnings: Racism, ageism, self-harm, blood,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorracismself-harm
When I worked at Disneyland in the summer of ’65, it was strange enough even without what I found in the dumpster. This was the sixties, and the Magic Kingdom, no matter how many long-haired hippies it denied admission to, couldn’t escape the decade.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
It was, Anna had to agree, a most excellent house. As the estate agent led them from room to room, Nigel admired the tall-shelved library, the long, ever-flowing swimming pool […]
Content warnings 1
abuse
When you look out from the garage doors of the corrugated steel warehouse where the Fort Springwell Community College soccer team made their heroic stand against the forces of darkness, the view at first seems . . . idyllic. A rocky shoreline, uncommon for...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
I took the rats with me when Ilona kicked me out because I knew she loved them. She’d hold them, caressing their pink tails as she fed them pierogi, their large front teeth scraping against the pads of her fingers. Anton was her favorite, a big black rat...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsubstance-useviolence
There once lived a boy who paid for a fortune. Nassim wore carob hair and eyes severe like cardamom. He spent his days scouring the souk for unique trinkets he liked to collect or counting the uneven stones of Jerusalem’s cobbled streets as he passed...
Content warnings 3
sexual-violenceviolencewar
This episode features "Crosstalk, Elysium" written by Carolyn Zhao. Published in the March 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/zhao_03_26 Support us on...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
When D0G hears the scream and streaks ahead down the leaf-strewn road through the fall-bright birch and beech and maple, I remember what my sister Taylor used to say: there […]
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
This episode features "D0G" written by Tania Fordwalker. Published in the April 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/fordwalker_04_26 Support us on...
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
Content note (click for details) 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) Sexual assault, child abuse, violence, abduction, death, blood, racism, colonization edited by Hal Y. Zhang ***RAW TRANSCRIPT, FIRST PASS EDIT NOTES*** Njiran Folk Beliefs VOLUME II Collected by Ven Nakai, retired Njiran...
Content warnings 3
racismsexual-violenceviolence
Layla was bleeding out. Her neurons began to supernova and transmute into a new electrical form. A maglev of old memories zipped past her. She was thinking about that one […]
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
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 : Premee Mohamed Narrator : Dani Daly Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “More Tomorrow” was first published in Automata Review, March 2018, and previously published as Escape Pod 713, in January 2020. A few grade-A curses. More...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Author : Kathleen Schaefer Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1059: A Little Freedom Makes Us Rebels is an Escape Pod original. Mild mentions of parental abuse This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones!...
Content warnings 1
abuse
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 first time you killed me, I cried like a baby. Stupid, stupid, to cry over something make-believe—stupid and ugly and pathetic, too, when already the only thing I wanted in the world was for you to find me pretty. I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t expected...
Content warnings 3
abusegoresexual-content
And all the devils are here. “What’s that from?” Millie asks as she gets her coat. I stand at the back window, looking out. Usually, you can see the downtown skyline from this position. Today, it’s just the hellmouth. A long tube that looks like an...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
In Sunnyhaven, we were all equally unique—and we’d been that way for years, the morning the New Girl arrived. Now, any of us would’ve admitted it: Sunnyhaven wasn’t perfect. There were no public parks or pools, no families walking their dogs down ash-lined...
Content warnings 3
ableismchild-abuseviolence
You find yourself standing in a train station. People hurry past you, grunting and shuffling: a gaggle of girls wrapped in black cloaks; a family of five laden with alphorn cases taller than they are; a thickly mustached man tugging a roller bag with a...
Nobody dances the way he does, and he knows it, and everyone can tell. The beat is something ancient and otherworldly, or that’s what it feels like; it wakes something inside him, half-remembered, half-submerged like the marble arm of a maiden or a piece...
Content warnings 2
sexual-contentviolence
Amelia’s favorite time of day is before dawn, when all the beauty is hidden by shadow. She rises from her bed every morning, shivering in the hushed air, and gets dressed in the dark. Sometimes she has to redo the buttons, but she doesn’t turn on the light...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
(Editorial Note: Starting with this month’s story, we will only post ebooks in the EPUB format as Amazon phased out the MOBI format a few years ago. Also, moving forward, we will be tagging our stories. We plan to tag our backlog of stories over the next...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
Kate was cursed by her cousin on his deathbed to never stay. She and her cousin Bo didn’t hate each other—far from it. They’d grown up together: same small farming town in the inland northwest, population 394. So small that when Bo finished high school, he...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
He called her Legs. “Legs for days,” he’d say, his voice thick with wonder. When he spoke to her, she was filled with a warm, heady feeling that made her purr and rub against him. She had to be careful when she did, because she was still growing into her...
Content warnings 3
abuseanimal-harmviolence
In the screen glow of the witching hours you see a silhouette flit in and out of the doorway. Your first meme and your first violation.
Content warnings 3
child-abusesexual-contentsuicide
“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
When I was eight years old, two things happened to me: I realized I wanted to hurt my cousin, and in that same moment God or the Devil or some other force in the universe kicked my consciousness out of my human body and into a fly that circled and alighted...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Author : A. T. Greenblatt Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Devin Martin Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Previously ran as episode 558 and first published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies Rated PG A Place to Grow By A. T. Greenblatt Lillian was wearing one of her...
Author : Natalie Zutter Narrator : Valerie Valdes Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 930: Parsley Girl, Parsley Girl, Let Down Your Trichobezoar is a PodCastle original. content notes for pregnancy loss, post-natal depression, and...
Content warnings 3
body-horrormental-illnesspregnancy-loss
Author : 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 : Anne Ivy Narrator : Elizabeth Green Host : Alicia Caporaso Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie Previously ran as episode 292 and first published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Read the full text here! Rated R Read the full text here! The post PodCastle...
Content warnings 3
goresexual-contentviolence
Author : T. R. Steele Narrator : Jordan Kurella Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 943: At Death’s Door is a PodCastle original. content notes for suicidal ideation and second-person narration Rated PG-13 At Death’s Door by T. R....
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssuicide
Author : Merc Fenn Wolfmoor Narrator : Sandra Espinoza Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Previously published in Apex Magazine (2021) Rated PG-13 Gray Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor A girl has lost her soul...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
“A Rose For Emily” was first published in The Forum, April 30, 1930 C/W for racial slurs [n-word], mental illness, misogyny, homophobia and Spoiler poisoning [collapse] I When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a...
Content warnings 3
mental-illnessmisogynyracism
PseudoPod 1015: What Haunts the Newbuild? is a PseudoPod original. When the Night Comes Out If the dead who loved her haunt an old home’s bones, what haunts the newbuild? What makes her creak and moan? Every house is a violence—and a weathered house knows...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmdeathpregnancy-loss
PseudoPod 1017: In the Hands of a Different God is a PseudoPod original. C/W for body horror, child abuse/neglect, implied homophobia Jim Kristofic novels Coyote Stranger The Sundown Killers Why Miitaries Must Destroy Cities To Save Them (Add your own air...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-abusehomophobia
‘Bad Doors’ was originally published in Uncanny Magazine in 2023, and was a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. C/W: pandemic, family and animal disappearance/death The country was at just over ten thousand deaths the morning that the door...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
‘All the Good You Did Not Do’ originally appeared in Apex magazine in November of 2023 C/W: reference to PTSD, depression When the doors slide open, the screams escape. Saul is summoned from his security podium by the researchers’ howls, and he slides in...
Content warnings 3
goremental-illnessviolence
“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 1026: Thoughts and Prayers is a PseudoPod original. C/W: Gun violence, school shooting https://www.npr.org/2025/09/08/nx-s1-5317647/school-shooting-industry https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-shootings-database/...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
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
“All The Eyes That See” was originally published in Cosmic Horror Monthly issue #42 (ed. Charles Tyra, December 2023); it also won the 2023 Australian Shadows Award for Short Fiction. C/W: child abuse, domestic abuse From the author: “This story is me once...
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorchild-abuse
“Her Skin” first appeared in the anthology, They Walk Among Us: A Collection of Utah Horror (42 Books, April 2020). C/W: intimate partner abuse/control Notes contain possible spoilers: see Host Commentary below He found her in Hells Canyon. After that, my...
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abusebody-horrordeath
PseudoPod 1032: Flash on the Borderlands LXXVIII (78): Terraeque urbesque recedant is a PseudoPod original. C/W: racism, xenophobia, road death From the author: “Othertongue” began as a pastiche of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space,” provoked by...
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body-horrordeathracism
“Interstate Mohinis” was originally published in Diabolical Plots (June 2023) C/W: sexual violence, cannibalism, reference to drug abuse In the way of Death runs the Vaitarani river. We are flayed open to its woe. We are always aware of its currents in...
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cannibalismsexual-violenceviolence
“Playing Tricks” was first published in It Was All A Dream: An Anthology Of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right, edited by Brandon Applegate, and later in Angela Sylvaine’s collection, The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls C/W: mental illness, gaslighting, child...
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abusechild-abusemental-illness
PseudoPod 1040: Flash on the Borderlands LXXIX (79): Ubi amor, ibi dolor is a PseudoPod original. For CWs, please see show notes below Content warnings with timings: 03:56–16:40 ‘A Table Set And Waiting’: graphic sexual content, body horror, homophobia...
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body-horrorhomophobiasexual-content
“The Yellow Wall Paper” was first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. C/W:emotional abuse/control, medical gaslighting It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial...
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abusemental-illness
Annie's Heart is a Haunted House was first published in THE HIDEOUS BOOK OF HIDDEN HORRORS, edited by Doug Murano, and was later published in Todd Keisling’s Stoker-nominated collection, COLD, BLACK & INFINITE
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deathgoreviolence
PseudoPod 1047: Growing Life is a PseudoPod original. C/W: strong body horror, death of a parent Lucy didn’t immediately notice her dead Mama in the middle of the playground. She had been busy having fun for the first time since Mama’s funeral. Sprinting...
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body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onegore
There is a place that doesn’t exist. Or rather, the hotel exists only in the moments where existence itself hesitates: between one time zone and the next, between the breath then the decision, between the life left and the one not found yet. It appears at...
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abusechild-abuseself-harm
This episode features "Scion" written by Thomas Ha. Published in the March 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ha_03_26 Support us on Patreon at...
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body-horrorgoreviolence
I drifted over the top of Diver’s Cliff in my spacesuit and considered going for a swim. That’s what we called giving up on Sapphire Alpha: going for a swim.
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suicideviolence
1. I’m sorry, my lord. 2. I miss the sound of your voice, deep enough to shake the mountain fortress’s stones. I miss feeling it rumble in the soles of my feet. I miss the glow of your eyes while you paced the Chamber of Mysteries, lava burning in the...
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abusemental-illnessviolence
You can know something is a trap and walk right into it anyway. There’s a vicious kind of glee in the snap of steel jaws springing closed, biting through skin and splintering bone. You can think aha, I knew it as you swallow the pain.
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goresexual-contentviolence
Content Warning: religiously motivated ableism and homophobia, both internalized and external; self-harm; and depictions of ritual sacrifice including drowning, hanging, and burning, not very graphic. Alone but for the crows, the priestess peers through...
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deathhomophobiaself-harm
Morag took a firm grip on the end of her walking stick, looked down at her robot Seamus. “Here goes,” she said to the robot. “You go in first, with […]
Open your eyes. Look down at your hands. What do you see? Your life is never the same after you get into the car with that bitch Sophia, who was […]
Content warnings 3
abuseself-harmsubstance-use
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...
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animal-harmviolencewar
There was a door. That’s the best place to start, I guess, given that there’s no good place to start. Luke and I were drinking bourbon and smoking in his attic bedroom. He’d brought me to his family compound in northwest Wyoming right after we were discharged.
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body-horrorgoreviolence
The creatures who shared your art with us had to explain many things to make it minimally comprehensible. This by itself made sense. You are who and what you are, and we are who and what we are, and the physical differences between us are profound. We...
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suicide
The day before the blind missionaries first arrived in our village, we had been raided by one of Jurgen Blanco’s enforcement squads. Blanco’s people were all the same—gaunt, lupine-visaged mockeries of men and women with broken, half-formed grins that...
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goreviolencewar
1. There is no better friend than the dermestid . I found them first in the woods, adorning the staring sockets of a coyote skull. So small I could have crushed them, they accomplished more than my child hands could—crawling, chewing, cleaning better than...
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animal-harmbody-horrordeath
Your heart stopped cold when you were walking to school in knee-high snow the morning after your parents separated. Maybe because you didn’t zip that padded snowsuit all the way up and your fur scarf was in the wash and the windchill of -10°F nipped your...
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body-horrorcannibalism
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...
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self-harmviolence
I killed four hundred soldier bots all vying for the same thing before I realized there was no such thing as anti-war if our invention was the solution.
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deathviolencewar
In an RPG game, a Black avatar repeatedly attempts to survive an encounter with the police. Content warnings: Violence, death, racism, hateful language, xenophobia Copyright khōréō magazine 2025. Story by KÁNYIN Olorunnisola, edited by Isabella Kestermann....
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deathracismviolence
A boy walks into an art exhibit and steals a sex doll on display. It doesn't go anywhere the doll expects. Content warnings: Body horror described in detail Copyright khōréō magazine 2025. Story by Kawai Shen, edited by Kanika Agrawal. Audio edition read...
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deathsexual-contentsexual-violence
Hollywood actor Hendrick lives through a curated trauma experience to become Greek enough for a role. But how much will it cost him? Content warnings: Suicide, torture simulation, cultural appropriation Copyright khōréō magazine 2025. Story by Christos...
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deathsuicideviolence
Author : Risa Wolf Narrator : Julia Rios Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Tigers for Sale was first published in Clarkesworld Magazine in July 2023 Content warnings: colonialism, implied genocide, psychological manipulation Tigers for...
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abusedeathgenocide
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...
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war
Author : Deborah L. Davitt Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Reflected in Mirrored Skies” was published by Compelling Science Fiction (Special Kickstarter Companion issue Nov. 6, 2018) Mentions of sexual assault...
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deathsexual-violenceviolence
Peace by Piece By Erin Cairns Frank thought all the battle-drones had been deactivated. Certainly, none of them had ever looked around with curious little twitches of their front-facing cameras before. This one whirred and clicked like an anxious bird,...
Nerves Into Circuits By Lyra Meurer Metal arms descend to press skin-soft conductor strips over my shoulders. The Neurasuit has been in warming mode for a few minutes–my overwrought senses accept the lines of heat like a gift. Despite my anxiety for the...
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body-horrorsuicideviolence
"Damian Marshall was a prisoner to his own brain. He was beating his fist against the glass of his cell, hoping someone could hear that this was not the real him. It was never meant to be this way and, truthfully, he had a heart swelling with love to give....
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mental-illnessviolencewar
"At 2:26am, police were radioed in to a casualty at a residence in (redacted), according to witness accounts and the child present at the home, a woman was found deceased at the bottom of the stairs. There were no signs or history of domestic violence....
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abusechild-abuseself-harm
Author : Louis Inglis Hall Narrator : Pippa Alice Stephens Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums Previously published by The Colored Lens Content warning for the death of a child Rated PG-13 The Hand That Feeds by Louis Inglis...
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body-horrorchild-deathgore
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...
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abusegoreviolence
Author : L. S. Johnson Narrators : Nicola Chapman, Matt Dovey and Peter Seaton-Clark Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by G Is for Ghosts, Poise and Pen Publishing Content warning for era-specific...
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deathhomophobiasuicide
Author : Mitchell Shanklin Narrator : Elie Hirschman Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 891: Trending Now! Help With Legal Fees for Reluctant Swordsman is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for child...
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body-horrorself-harmviolence
Author : Victoria Dixon Narrator : Eleiece Krawiec Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums PodCastle 893: Counting Fairies is a PodCastle original. Content warning for injury to an animal Rated PG-13 Counting Fairies By Victoria...
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animal-harmdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Author : Cat Rambo Narrator : Cat Rambo Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by UNLOCKING THE MAGIC, edited by Vivian Caethe Content warning for PTSD, suicidal ideation, and body horror Rated PG Broken All...
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body-horrormental-illnesssuicide
Author : Gillian Knox Narrator : Karen Menzel (née Bovenmyer) Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 900: Sour Fruit is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for domestic abuse and the death of a parent Rated PG-13...
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abusechild-abusedeath-of-a-loved-one
Author : Christine Lucas Narrator : Kat Kourbeti Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by Abyss & Apex Content warnings for ableist slurs and attitudes, violence, and misogyny Rated PG-13 Moths in a...
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misogynyviolencewar
Author : Jeanna Mason Stay Narrator : Valerie Valdes Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums PodCastle 905: The Next Dead Wife is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for coercive control, domestic violence, and murder Rated...
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abusedeathviolence
Authors : Amanda Helms and Anne Leonard Narrators : Cherrae L. Stuart and Christiana Ellis Host : Eric Valdes Artist : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums “The House, The Witch, and Sugarcane Stalks” Previously published by Lightspeed, “To Pluck a Twisted...
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slavery
Author : A. D. Ellicott Narrator : Emma Osborne Host : Wilson Fowlie Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously Published by Body of Work, ed. C.Z. Tacks, Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild (2023) Content warnings for fatphobia and eating...
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fatphobiamental-illnessself-harm
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...
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animal-harmdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Author : Leah Ning Narrator : Amanda Ching Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published in Monster Lairs (Dark Matter INK, October 2023) Rated PG-13 The Hunter, the Monster, and the Things That Could Have Been by...
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death-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
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...
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abuseself-harm
Author : Jennifer R. Donohue Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes Previously published in issue #3 of Gamut, on March 1, 2024 Content warnings for gore and traumatic birth Rated R Auguries By Jennifer R. Donohue She...
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body-horrorgoreviolence
“Novel of the White Powder” first appeared in The Three Impostors in 1895. C/W: drug abuse, delusions The Angels of Mons: The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War by Arthur Machen The Angel of Mons Jess Nevins on The Novel of The White Powder White Lines by...
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body-horrordeathsubstance-use
“Madame Painte: For Sale” was first published in Behold! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, edited by Doug Murano (Crystal Lake 2017), and then in the Word Horde collection ‘Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions’, in August 2025. C/W: 2nd...
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body-horrordeath
“Do It” was first published in the anthology ‘120 Murders: Dark Fiction Inspired by the Alternative Era’ C/W: gun violence, knife violence Note from author: The pizza joint in the story is based on a locally (local to me) famous spot in Boston’s South...
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deathsuicideviolence
“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...
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deathgoreviolence
“Cyanide Constellations” was published in the collection Cyanide Constellations and Other Stories by Sara Tantlinger in October 2025. C/W: Suicide, 2nd person PoV To support us during our year-end campaign, go to https://escapeartists.net/support-ea...
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body-horrorchild-deathsuicide
“The Old Lady” first appeared in the 1929 collection of ghost stories, Randall’s Round Penda’s Fen Void Merch Hot Singles In Your Area Adela Young must have come up to Oxford at the same time as myself; but no one, in a way, knew that she had. She was one...
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child-deathdeathviolence
“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...
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deathmental-illnesssuicide
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...
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body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
“Hemorrhage” was originally published in the Book of Queer Saints Volume 2 CW: self-harm, drug abuse, addiction, physical abuse and coercive control It’s a dumb fight to pick, but I only learn that later. By the time they drag me out the back door of the...
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abuseself-harmsubstance-use
“The Darkness Carried by the Beasts” was originally published in The Sunday Morning Transport in 2023. CW: cancer, death of a family member From the author: This story came to me, at first, with the image of a man and his dog in the woods, somewhere in...
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deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
PseudoPod 965: The Ecstasy of the Saints is a PseudoPod original. CW: body horror; self-harm From the author: I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school through the seventh grade. That meant I spent three days a week in church, plus Sunday mass with...
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body-horrorself-harmsexual-content
PseudoPod 968: The Vibrations, Louder is a PseudoPod original. Insanity? Sure, why not. My lawyer advised me to plead insanity, and maybe it will help me. At least I’ll be able to talk to somebody qualified. The state of mental health care is deplorable in...
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deathgoreviolence
PseudoPod 973: Flash on the Borderlands LXXIII: Perpetuation is a PseudoPod original. Shallow Fangs: C/W for second-person PoV “The First Mrs. Edward Rochester Would Like a Word”- From the author: “Many readers want better for the attic wife from Jane...
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abuseanimal-harmviolence
PseudoPod 976: Every Last Gossamer Strand is a PseudoPod original. CW: narcissism, family abuse and especially spiders. C.J. Dotson’s upcoming novel, The Cut Jess Lewis’s website Brene Brown: When Narcissists Get Older Fleetwood Mac, The Chain The high...
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abusebody-horrorcannibalism
“The Fruits Of” originally appeared in the online Spring 2024 edition of Club Chicxulub CW: dementia, death of a family member and suicidal ideation. They’d long since passed the point where road gave way to trail gave way to forest. Bright green ferns now...
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death-of-a-loved-onemental-illnesssuicide
PseudoPod 978: Where the Brass Band Plays is a PseudoPod original. CW: environmental horror, parent loss; grief, reality vs. illusion, nostalgia, willful blindness From the author: “This story grew out of the feeling that we live in an increasingly...
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death-of-a-loved-one
“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...
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animal-harmbody-horrordeath
“The Shambler from the Stars” first appeared in Weird Tales, September 1935 I have nobody but myself to blame for the whole affair. It was my own blundering that precipitated that unforeseen horror upon us both; my own stupidity that caused our downfall....
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deathgoreviolence
“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...
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self-harmsexual-contenttransphobia
PseudoPod 987: Reflections on Bloody Mary is a PseudoPod original. CW: domestic abuse, coercive control, alcoholism The Pixel Project, https://www.thepixelproject.net, has a list of shelters worldwide “Maaa-reee,” my husband taunts. “Oh, Maaa-reee. Come...
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abusesubstance-useviolence
PseudoPod 988: Anthropology 201 is a PseudoPod original. C/W: references to mental illness, second-person PoV College is a crucible. You go in a dumb kid, and with luck, you leave a less dumb adult, ready to take your place in the world. It took me a...
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goremental-illnessviolence
“Dimorphism” first appeared in SEASONS OF SEVERANCE, an anthology-collection hybrid published by Cemetery Gates Media in 2023. “Dimorphism” was later mentioned as a standout in the Summation section of The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 16. The short story...
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animal-harmbody-horrormental-illness
PseudoPod 991: The Hermit Crab God is a PseudoPod original. C/W: harm to animals, mental illness Notes from the author: I recently spoke with a nature photographer who was very passionate about hermit crabs, and he made me want to not give up. I suppose...
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animal-harmbody-horrormental-illness
PseudoPod 992: Chattering Spines is a PseudoPod original. C/W immolation, guns, animal harm From the author: Oh Spines. I wrote this while at a writing conference called Superstars Writing Seminars back in February of 2022 after attending a session run by...
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animal-harmgoreviolence
“Home, Laced in Web” was previously published by The Dodge on July 15, 2024 C/W: mutation, body horror, spiders I follow behind Butcher. A lot of nights spent imagining what I’d say to him. But there’s not been much talk on the road. Pretty used to silence...
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body-horrorgoreviolence
“The Bride” was originally published in Black Static in 2020 C/W necrophilia, sexual assault, physical assault, control As you drive south, the heat rushes up to greet you like your name is in the guestbook and it has your room prepared. A wet, eager heat,...
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abusesexual-contentsexual-violence
“The Wind Beneath” originally appeared in Cosmic Horror Monthly “They Still Haven’t Found Stevie” has previously been featured on the No Sleep Podcast “Precious Darlings” originally appeared in Bag of Bones: This is Too Tense C/W: pandemic, mass death;...
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child-abusechild-deathgore
PseudoPod 998: The Story-Stealer’s Night is a PseudoPod original. C/Ws from author: Body horror, creature horror, brief suicidal ideation, cancer, child abuse, child death and parent death Story-teller, Story-screamer Tell your tales into this night. The...
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body-horrorchild-deathgore
‘Barghest’ was first published Modern Folklore: A Comma Press Course Anthology, in August 2025 C/W: bullying From the author: “The idea for Barghest came from reading legends surrounding the existence of mythical ‘black dogs.’ These were supernatural,...
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abuseanimal-harmviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
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body-horrormental-illnessself-harm
Countryboy T loses their home after the deaths of their parents. Luckily, the cats have been in charge all along. Content warnings: Institutionalization, sanism, ableism, family death, animal death Copyright khōréō magazine 2024. Story by [sarah] Cavar,...
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deathdeath-of-a-loved-onemental-illness
"When We Make it to Bet-Zelem" is a profound meditation on hope and what it means to seek something that may no longer exist. Content warnings: War, violence, starvation, mass killing, animal death, displaced persons Copyright khōréō magazine 2024. Story...
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deathviolencewar
A Croat refugee comes to terms with his trauma through studying metaphorical maps to his own lostness. Content warnings: Graphic wartime violence and implied torture, death of friends and strangers, hateful language directed at ethnic groups, mental...
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deathgenocidewar
A family vacation in the mountains takes a weird turn when they are forced to choose what to bring and what to leave behind. Content warnings: Violence, war, animal cruelty, death, intergenerational trauma Copyright khōréō magazine 2024. Story by Leslie...
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child-deathdeathgenocide
Nuran struggles with her mental health and an abusive household. Is escape possible with a voice down the well? Content warnings: Mental Illness, death Copyright khōréō magazine 2024. Story by Esra Kahya, translated from Turkish by Aysel K. Basci, edited...
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abusechild-abusesexual-violence
Author : Eleanna Castroianni Narrator : Kat Kourbeti Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Devin Martin Discuss on Forums PodCastle 833: This Wooden Heart is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for death and references to war and genocide. Rated PG-13 This...
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deathracismwar