Meimei dates really bad guys. Who want to use her. Who don't know what they're in for.
Content warnings 5
abusebody-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
Urban
432 free-to-read stories tagged “Urban”
A blackmailer forces Helena to make entire fake steaks for him or else he’ll tell the authorities about her business printing fake beef for shady restaurants. She’s never tried to make a whole steak though.
Content warnings 4
abusegoreillness-and-pandemicviolence
"It is 2091, and Grace is staring at the rabbit in the corner of her visual overlay. It is an Angora rabbit, fluffy and white, and when Grace picked the icon out, she did not realize how much she would come to dread the sight of it. She moves, and the...
Content warnings 6
abusedeathmental-illnesspregnancy-losssexual-violencesuicide
Sam’s ability is modest, but he’s still excited to be accepted into the Super Team. Now he just has to figure out how he can make the biggest difference—assuming he can do more good than harm.
Content warnings 1
violence
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
"During one of the much smaller disasters that preceded the really big disaster, I met a lot of my neighbors online. I can’t remember if we set up the WhatsApp group because of the pandemic or the civil disorder or both. My Minneapolis block had always...
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
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
"Ambition!” Trevor emphasized, rapping knuckles hard on the wood table. “That is what makes the great men!” He took a satisfied swallow from his mug. Across from him, Barnaby put down the daily he’d been reading and sipped from his own beer. Pulling out a...
Content warnings 3
deathracismviolence
In a world desperate for wood for fires and paper, a man and his brother look for a tree good enough to make a world-class violin.
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"My dear Cara, Thank you for sending me the photos, I never thought I’d feel this way again. But the pictures help. They really do. I can’t stop looking at them. Thank you for scanning and emailing them to me. These photos and our old videos are all I’ve...
"The first Martian War was won not by man, but microbes. The second we fought with Martian weapons that nearly broke the world. The third invasion we stopped by our own hands, using magic.” —Wei-Yin Sun, Imperial Historian in the Court of the Empress...
Content warnings 2
deathwar
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
Lao Dao processes trash in a fantastic future "third-space" Beijing. To get money for his daughter's education, he makes a dangerous trip to first-space--a city that unfolds when his own Beijing sleeps.
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
violence
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
When the the elitist institution of Ozymandias Academy and its headmaster, Vamon Kinctuarin, can't find a solution to the city's worsening drought, 2 self-taught magicians, Noah and his partner Manny, take it upon themselves to find a solution to the crisis.
"That first video of the flying man goes viral on social media and gets featured on the news. No jet pack. No hang glider. Just him, unaided, soaring over the cable-stayed bridge that leads into the city. The video looks like it was shot on a cellphone...
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
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
Salman pursues the truth behind stories his grandfather told him about an impoverished princess he used to know back in Pakistan and the Jinn that protected her.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"My country may seem strange to you. There are times when it seems strange to me. I wake and work. I work then rest. And in between I say things, and I don’t say things. Because, as you’ll learn, in my country, what you say is important. But what you don’t...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"A week before the Season began, as Mrs. Vanessa Saunders held brunch court at the Empire Hotel, a photo appeared on her phone: a large oak door beneath a pale green sign with silver lettering. Impossible, she thought, flipping the infernal device over...
Content warnings 1
death
When Megian sets out her homemade book exchange, a mysterious neighbor starts trading objects and art for the books, but some of the items don’t seem to come from this world at all.
Content warnings 1
war
An android who knows nothing besides his work in a factory, is given one final week to explore the world before he is forced to undergo mandatory reprogramming, in this bittersweet precursor to TJ Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
"At first I thought something had broken in my book. I didn’t notice until the afternoon light from the windows began to recede. I tried to increase the brightness settings of the page, but no matter how I thumbed the margins, they would not change. For...
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
"June was the first of my friends to get into it. This isn’t surprising—she was playing Wordle for weeks before Margo or I discovered it. When we met up for our weekly lunch, she kept checking her phone and I assumed it was some new game. Then she put it...
Content warnings 1
substance-use
"It was half past midnight when Olga heard the Devil cry. They were supposed to be wild tonight, the three of them. Cassandra had led the way and Maria and Olga didn’t put up much of a fight. They would visit the Devil’s bridge—anything that claimed to be...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 6
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicmisogynysexual-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
When an illicit trade deal goes wrong and Quandary is blamed for it, she goes on the run to avoid the crosshairs of a bioengineered killer that only lives for 24 hours. If Q can evade it for that long, she just might survive.
Content warnings 3
deathsubstance-useviolence
"Every sunset, Julia climbs the city her mother built. It feels enormous, on the outside. Inside, it’s cramped, a human anthill. It didn’t used to be, but Julia doesn’t remember what it felt like when there was room enough for everyone. In the locker room,...
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 Hurston Hill is threatened by a suspiciously powerful urban development firm, Miss l’Abielle steps up to protect her community with the help of a mysterious orphaned girl in this charming follow-up to “St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid”.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
The narrator and a friend plot to steal a valuable artwork from an underworld boss who’s pissed them off.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
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
‘Nisha only has five hours to get across New York to her dead aunt’s apartment before the city comes to throw away all her stuff. She’s not even sure it’s worth it, but they said her aunt was a witch…
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"Your mom loves you,” Cassie’s father says. They’re in an elevator. They only ever talk about Cassie’s mom in elevators, or when they go hiking and Cassie’s father leaves his watch at home. Cassie doesn’t know if her mom actually doesn’t listen, then, or...
Content warnings 4
abusesexual-violencesubstance-usesuicide
"Cool and Sexy Asian Girl stands outside the convenience store under the striped awning and waits for the rain to stop. The rain is never going to stop. Cool and Sexy Asian Girl would need to go to a different city for the rain to stop, a city not built on...
"Okay, so you know those things they sell called ‘useless machines’?” the inventor says. He is smiling. Of course, the boy knows them; he’d briefly had one that had been plucked from his bedroom floor and relocated into the inventor’s basement workroom...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"A dual-carriage road descends from a flyover bridge in Thamesmead, bearing sluggish traffic on both sides. From inside bus number 229, a woman looks out of the large windows and thinks the other vehicles look like toy cars. For all she knows, the 229...
Content warnings 5
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-onemental-illnessviolence
"Darius sells three pocket robots on the first Tuesday of October, and another three on Wednesday. At this rate he’ll be able to pay for his legs by Christmas. He does lose one robot to theft: someone figures out how to jimmy open the door of the display...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Her mom has grown rich by telling people’s fortunes, but all Theresa Anne wants is for her girlfriend to be safe. And to be brave enough to actually talk to this “girlfriend.”
Content warnings 1
death
Samantha searches Paris to try to find what’s killing fallen angels.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
child-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesuicideviolence
"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
A magician dies on stage performing his most famous trick, but what really happened?
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
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
What if you tried to teleport and succeeded? What if you couldn’t manage to do it again?
"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
"Holli was hanging upside down off the edge of her flimsy folding bed, watching goretoons in her goggles, when Puck the Pirate showed up again. Ahoy, Holli! Guess what? His red-cheeked puppet face swelled, blocking out the show, which annoyed Holli until...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"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
"I live in my car. It’s both worse and better than you’d expect. It’s an old Subaru hatchback so I can put the back seat down and sleep. I have all my stuff in the back but I have a space where I can lay. The place where I park is, like, the unofficial...
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
"They were all hard at work, preparing for the long sleep. The sunlight-scattering sulfate aerosol constantly injected into the atmosphere since the time of the Geoengineering Generation had not been enough, providing little more than periodic acid...
Content warnings 1
death
Intensifying earthquakes are gradually destroying the world, but Marina still has her art, and Elodie is building a robot.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
Master Zhao shares his tale of how he discovered his time-travel ability and what he’s done with it. But why hasn’t he used it to become more successful?
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
"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
A disabled son care-taking for a disabled father tries to understand the mysterious blur haunting them.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"Steve, over here! Turn to your right. Can we get a smile?” He falls back on his training easily enough, turns to the cameras, gives them his famous crooked smile, tilts his head just so as the flashes go off so they can capture the smoulder that...
"Alvin’s scripts arrived in yellow envelopes. They were hand delivered, placed inside his letter box as if part of the regular mail, but with no address or stamps on it. The scripts were typed on unlined paper. They were short, never longer than a page,...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Six hours left. “What do you want to eat sweetheart?” She looks at me expectantly, holding out her phone to show me the menu. “It is your special day. I’ll get you anything you want.” I smile, shake my hands. “Eomma, it’s fine. You don’t have to do this.”...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onewar
"Memories of Memories Lost" by Mahmud El Sayed is a story about the price of the things we choose to forget. Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by Mahmud El Sayed, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition read by Karim Kronfli and produced by Lian...
"Fejértorony There’s dysphoria, and then there’s turning into a mid-size city. But sometimes you try male, you try female, you try different kinds of nonbinary and it only makes you realize that something still doesn’t quite fit, something fundamental....
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
It’s just business as usual at the Bureau of Metahuman, Mutant, and Occult Affairs until an employee for the government agency begins to wonder if work is following her home…
A 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
"Imagine: purple-haired girl shooting down the moon.” I type the prompt into the black screen as if making a request to God. The blurred shape of a head appears in four variations over a pixelated ocean of gray. The eyes, corrugated whites, slowly take...
Content warnings 3
abusesexual-contentviolence
"Muna shuts the storeroom door as quietly as she can. Holding a just-waxed bundle of letters to her chest, she sticks out her head to check the bookshop floor. If she walks between the shelves on the far right, she can slip out unnoticed in ten heartbeats....
"I hear them howling long before I see them. Never been sure why they do that, after a few drinks. Like a troop of howler monkeys, whooping to each other. Or wolves, running as a pack. I’m used to it, after six years in the City. Still hate when they’re...
"Their power is how they can turn you into one of them. That’s the trick of it, see. You can go in with your swords and sacrifice, you can go in with your red heart and good intentions, and they will grin with their white teeth and say, “Welcome to Grey &...
A woman who fears she’s failing as a painter and as an artist seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets and finds something even more wondrous, but also more impossible to capture on canvas…
An all-but-forgotten demigod bets everything on one last gambit to secure his future before he fades from existence. Copyright khōréō magazine 2022. Story by Guan Un, edited by Rowan Morrison. Audio edition read by Guan Un, edited by Lian Xia Rose, with...
Content warnings 1
violence
"There was only one freight car down the wall into the Flood District, and it was shared by all bulk service providers who came bearing gifts: maintenance workers, solar installers, grocery and package delivery, and the like. A bing-bong meant another...
"Who is the most beloved person alive? Is it one of those actors who plays superheroes? Is it a political leader? Maybe you’re a galaxy brain and say Beyoncé? No matter who you pick, you know you’re wrong. There’s always that better person who we love so...
Content warnings 2
self-harmviolence
A university student seeks special accommodations for her new support animal, causing havoc all around her.
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
"Jinah stands in her old underwear and scrapes the future from women’s skin. Their scales fall to the floor. The women sit up scoured red and smooth. The scales are impossible to see unless you’ve learned how to look, but impossible to miss once you’ve...
In a near-future San Francisco where the gig economy has made work more precarious than ever, Edwina is an average twenty-something scrambling to hold down her job with a major skin care brand. Until her awful boss does something you should never do—angers...
Fear was already on the street waiting for her. Tulaya had seen this purge-and-nightmare Manifest before in Fatih, tagging the footsteps of an old man in the spice market with its shadow like claws.
Content warnings 1
death
"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
"Your grandfather is dead. Your instance gave you the news: a phone call in the dead of night that woke you from a dead sleep. “Hello?” you said, accented with slumber. “Is this Soyoung Kang?” your own voice said, accented with Korean. “Yes,” you said. The...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Pauly is a good son. When he brings home three beautiful Masquerades, he’s expecting that his mother will be proud of him. But when his mother begins asking favors of his Masquerades, he realizes that being a good son sometimes means disobeying.
"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
"As the people began to die, desperation drove us to the depths of the sea for cures. We mined mineral-rich vents until the tube worms went extinct, stripped polymetallic nodule fields bare, squeezed sludge out of sea sponges to treat the new diseases,...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
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
Connor works at a restaurant in New York where he has a magical touch with food (literally). Problems with his family keep interfering with his career, though.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
body-horror
Detective Connolly is a dog in a world where some animals are “knowledgeable” and can talk like humans. A human professor hires him to help cover up a murder . . .
An aspiring young stage magician meets an older magician over coffee to try to convince him to share some of his tricks. And to show him a few of his own.
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
A closeted young Hawaiian man bails a devious Native-American god out of a Honolulu jail and watches his life spiral out of control.
Content warnings 1
substance-use
The narrator makes a deal with the Devil—or one of his snakes, at least. She thinks she’s clever, but one deal leads to another.
Content warnings 4
animal-harmself-harmsubstance-useviolence
Agatha wants a svelte replacement for her plump body, but since she can't get one grown in a reasonable time, she looks into an illegal swap.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Fresh out of prison for hacking, Aedo gets a request to do an even bigger hack. But why does Energy Davison want to hack its own systems?
"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
"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...
Author : Eden Royce Narrator : Laurice White Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 914: The Magnolia Returns is a PodCastle original. Rated PG The Magnolia Returns By Eden Royce The Magnolia blooms out of nowhere at any time of year it...
Content warnings 2
abusebody-horror
In a corporate-run dystopia, a trans girl plucked out of poverty to give birth to a clone meets her replacement.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorpregnancy-lossviolence
Barber Gio Monsargo has learned to stay quiet and keep his head down, offering shaves and haircuts, not political opinions. But when a high-ranking military official of the Empire begins visiting his shop, Gio finds himself tested in ways he could never imagine.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"On the high plains of Kansas in a tiny town worn down by drought, I stop at a roadside diner. When I ask for water, the waitress pours me a glass of ice water, presenting it with obvious pride. “We have our own well,” she says. “And the wind turbine on...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Even death is no match for a trio of elderly, stubborn, ever-sparring sisters, who refuse to rest in peace while their grudges live on…
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Flyer 247-3 hasn’t flown in five days. In these five days, she has become accustomed to the hum and whine of the air filtration system cranked to its highest setting. She has become accustomed to her cell, four paces long, four paces wide. Its lack of...
Unknown forces attempt to stop Judge Dee and Jonathan from transporting a mysterious and possibly dangerous prisoner, who holds a secret about the Judge, to an executioner in France…
An engineer who frequently travels for her job, suddenly finds herself in airports other than the one she arrived in…
"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...
"It wasn’t a glamorous entrée into the world of the rich. Ernestine jimmied a service door and climbed forty flights of dingy, bare metal stairs to avoid the sensors in the hotel elevators. Maids and mechanics locked eyes, disapprovingly, then decided she...
"Scarlett’s eyes had to be perfect. Jon was the artist who’d made her, so it bothered him to think that so much of Scarlett would be crafted by other people. Scarlett’s limbs were carved from silicon polymer and coated in a soft synthetic skin from the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsexual-contentviolence
"In his early days in slivermoon, Saki worked the phone lines. Companies in slivermoon stressed in prestige magazines and press releases that it was too hard for them to employ bodies. Bodies were expensive to sustain. Bodies needed food, warmth, and...
"Never forget you are their monster. That’s the first rule we tell you, crammed between us in the back of Paola’s dad’s vintage ’22 Dodge Challenger, his project car he lets her borrow, with slick wheels and faux-leather seats that make our Sangrona noses...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
In "Kwong's Bath" by Angela Liu, Kwong is visited by the ghosts of the people she has trouble letting go. Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by Angela Liu, edited by Sachiko Ragosta. Audio edition read by Lauren Kong, with casting and production by...
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-oneself-harmsuicide
"The fireflies lead me to the clearing where my lover waits patiently. I can see her illuminated by the light of the moon. She stands under the udala tree, an image of perfection, her dark skin glowing in the silvery moonlight. The warmth of excitement...
Content warnings 1
violence
"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
"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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"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....
"For Julie, it was the cryptid out in the woods behind our old elementary school. Wings, red eyes. Yes, Julie came back knowing exactly when everyone she loved was going to die, but it was worth it, she told us. The six of us—well, five after Sophie...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Vashti is a pathogenic diplomat—an ambassador to the world of viruses, whom she communicates with through a machine that can translate their chemical signals into images, tastes, smells, sounds, and memories. She begins a negotiation between the US...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"The company alarm sends Cass flailing out of bed with its first chime. If she lingers under the blankets, she’ll disturb Maya: if she doesn’t get up before the second alarm, the volume ratchets up to eighty decibels, and the smart thermostat will crank up...
"Leo Gregory is losing altitude. He coasts on the thermals of a legacy fading behind him: a documentary here, a retrospective there, some greatest-hits collection down in the corner for the dilettantes. Oh, the work has lost none of its grandeur: his...
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
"Grandma died last year, yet she comes every Saturday to have lunch with me. When she was still alive, she loved telling everyone that we were roommates. She would say to her embroidery club friends that her roomie had landed a very hip job in the city...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Patricia could hear them gathered on her front porch, the kings and popes and saints, gossiping and chattering and generally having a good time. She turned. King Solomon lay sprawled across the bed like it was his golden throne. He raised his head to...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"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
"There was a shop in old Haifa that specialised in Treif artefacts, so that was where Mili went first. Haifa sprawled along the side of Mount Carmel. Successive waves of regeneration didn’t do much to change it. Now adaptoplant buildings sprouted like...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"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...
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.
Author : Kel Coleman Narrator : Hollis Monroe Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Delete Your First Memory for Free was originally published in FIYAH Magazine Issue 17 (January 2021). Delete Your First Memory for Free by...
"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
"Here’s the thing you need to know to understand this story: I was meant to be an only child. The doctors, when they examined my mother, only counted one heartbeat. One. Me. I don’t know when my sister came along. My mother, so ready to accept, so...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"When Elisabeth takes the baby to the beach on Thursday afternoon, another shambler has got through the fence. “Stay ten meters back,” the guard says, his translucent face mask fogged with the heat. “Yes, yes,” Elisabeth says. “And the child. Ten meters.”...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath
Babysitting/bodyguarding a group of rich kids should be easy money, especially for a tough joker-ace like Khan—provided he doesn’t end up killing them himself.
Content warnings 1
violence
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
"Truth be told, I have not done much with the entryway. It keeps up appearances. I am told it is a perfectly acceptable facsimile of a standard human receiving room. My handlers nod approvingly when I sit them on its low velvet cushions and shallow couch...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Every Halloween, an elderly woman hands out candy to a young trick-or-treater who’s dressed as a witch each time, looking exactly the same age. With each passing year, the woman grows more attached to the little witch and her odd nature. But she is no...
Content warnings 1
death
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
A robot music performance aims to teach human beings that robots deserve to be treated as people.
Content warnings 1
death
When it sees its neighbors torn down, a smart building appeals to the government not to let it die.
Two American men come to a town on the Tibetan plateau to see how they extract clean air from the high slopes that they can sell to the public.
Everyone has a timer on their wrists counting down the years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until they meet their soul mates. Fiona’s just 24, and her timer says she’ll have to wait 40 years. So what to do until then?
Chime’s husband is also another woman’s wife. The sharing isn’t a problem, per se: she has her own wife when she’s male. The problem is that she keeps getting him back in increasingly beat-up condition.
It’s been a long time since Ravi left Guyana, but he’s sure he recognizes a Jumbie, even in New York, where they don’t believe in evil spirits. And it’s following him.
Content warnings 2
sexual-contentviolence
The two-tongued Jeremy app helps lots of kids with their schoolwork, but Jeremy thinks it’s asking too much of him, and he’s afraid to try to turn it off.
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusesuicide
Summer of 1955, the last summer of high school. Mike remembers his girlfriend and how wonderful it was being in love. And he remembers the awful things that happened at the end.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Meshee is one of eight pregnant women whose babies are being auctioned off against their will.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorpregnancy-lossviolence
The government wants to build affordable housing for the homeless, but it wants them to agree to quit using magic first.
In the future, lottery winners will get their hearts’ desire, whether it’s turning into a bird, going to Mars, or vanishing into thin air.
Content warnings 1
violence
Sam is a talented hacker who extracts Jane’s personal info in order to seduce her.
A government agent secretly watches Ryx (age 10) and Hector (age 19) because they both have dangerous “variant” abilities.
Content warnings 2
deathsubstance-use
In 1912 Cairo, the police investigate the apparent murder of an immortal Djinn.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Electricity does strange things around Arthur, especially when he gets excited. He's excited about Christina, so their first date is going to be a real adventure.
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
Zhou is an ad man for a Chinese marketing firm, and he has to find a way to get people to buy a new photo technology that has unusual capabilities.
Ellie is trying to catch a train from Boston to DC so she can visit her ailing mother when her sister calls to tell her she needs to "go to the skunkworks and repair the physics of this universe."
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
A woman paramedic and her best friend fear that despite their best efforts, they end up causing more pain than they relieve.
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
All the imaginary creatures a young person could want to make apartment life more pleasant.
A lonely old Chinese man gets involved in the fight against smog--without government approval.
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
An estate agent is forced to choose between a sale and his humanity when facing the inhuman eldritch forces that feed off rental tenants across the United Kingdom.
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorviolence
"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
"Sparrow retired from the battlefield at the height of her powers and couldn’t be persuaded to change her mind. She was done with fighting, armies, blood, death, and taking orders. Now, she ran a salon at the edge of Florelia, Tira City’s entertainment district."
Content warnings 1
war
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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
gorehomophobiaviolence
"At 5:43 a.m. this morning, residents of Grackle Pointe Apartments awoke to a malfunction in their complex’s multi-spatial engine due to an unprecedented derecho that swept through the Montrose area of Houston. This resulted in tenants being mentally and...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgore
"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
Damon’s UBI royalties just crashed. His social capital went up in smoke. His girlfriend left him. Now he finds out he’s going to die. What to do? Solve his own murder, for starters…and maybe, just maybe, strike it rich along the way.
Content warnings 3
deathsubstance-useviolence
"Hey there—comrade—are you also part of the—Space Industry—Development Program—First Cohort? I’m Zhang Haoyu—second lieutenant—pleased to meet you.” The man in front of me spoke in choppy fragments. He extended his hand, heedless of the puzzled looks...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onemental-illness
"We called it the monster because we could, though none of us found the label to be particularly satisfying. After a certain point, Yerim started calling it the Logos Pilgrim. Which was understandable, seeing as how she was the most mystically inclined...
"Tyler Moore’s spells strive to exist in and of themselves. They make no excuse or justification for their existence: no promise to speak to the dead, predict next year’s grain or gold prices, or read the mind of lawyers during a hostile takeover. They are...
"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
"Two hours out of deadsleep is too soon to be staring at the butchered corpse of a dead god. Neel looks down as the kalipeeli begins its descent to Chowpatty Beach and feels his stomach flip."
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgore
"If it was the first time I saw a house mourning? No, my dear. Not at all. Yet, it broke my heart to enter House and hear her parquet floor moaning, see the toilet sink weeping, feel her foundations shuddering ever so slightly. I put the plastic bags on...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
In celebration of the 50th World Fantasy Convention’s Toastmaster, Michael Swanwick, Reactor presents a new Mongolian Wizard story about a battle to save Paris from an unexpected new enemy.
Content warnings 3
goreviolencewar
"Driver, gharivala, beta, bhai-jaan, baba. All the words used to address me; so rarely do I remember being addressed by my name. Not to complain. I don’t think people ever meant to be disrespectful. But having someone to respectfully, lovingly,...
"She’s walking by the river on an overcast day, when sweat runs down her palms, goosebumps all over her neck. The breeze stills. The gray sky turns blood red. Instead of the Sun, through a clearing in the clouds, she finds the Eye. Veins branch across a...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsubstance-usewar
"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
In a post-nuclear event Silicon Valley, a man grieving the loss of his wife struggles to find comfort when he is forced to communicate with his neighbors’ AI devices, rather than the people themselves.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"The alert comes screaming in on Jana’s implant, bright light lancing through the fog of REM sleep: [New glyph. Intersection of 148th and Cliffton.] When her eyes snap open, it’s there, the only thing fully in focus. A blurry image of the yet-untitled...
"He is King Lear in the window’s sunshine. There is pastina boiling on the stove in a kitchen as familiar as his soul. Mad monologues push against his fogged oxygen mask, vibrating with his tremoring lips, his ragged breathing, the impossible weight of the...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"Deep in the abyss of the Unholy Bazaar, in a shop that reeked of death and god-blood, Sparrow lay screaming in a web of rope and unbreakable silk. Around her, the Aunties bustled: sawing and rinsing and hammering; cursing, grunting, and muttering; welding...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
"An excerpt from the unfinished memoirs of Sullivan Kingsley. Text was dictated to and recorded by a Kvasir Scrivener™. Any poetic editorializing can be assumed in accordance with the spirit of Mr. Kingsley’s intentions, as interpreted by a conjured...
Content warnings 3
deathgoresexual-content
"The women of Dejima Island could never pinpoint when their dreams began to change, but they knew it had something to do with the tradesmen’s tales. The foreigners who arrived at the docks were hard men, chiseled by salt and wind and all the horrors of two...
"You don’t go gettin’ police robots to chase you through the Westside because you want to have fun. But the excitement that Tariq felt at the thought of this challenge … He’d outrun actual cops. He’d outrun the wheeled robots they called “The Chris Browns”...
"Rally is a dance on wet gravel to the roar of six cylinders and the flutter of turbochargers but I say again, Rally is a dance. I remembered when I discovered this truth, when I stopped jogging in place and began to ice skate on narrow back trails, not so...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
"The low rumble of the train cut through the night and the living flesh of The City, carrying its passengers ever further from the gleam of parliaments and providence. The stop towards Wild Park grew ever closer, represented along the wall of the train by...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
"A whale soars over Brooklyn. Clouds spread in streaks over the pale blue sky like cold butter. And the whale cleaves right through. Dar spots it from his perch on the rooftop, smoking a contraband cigarette. At first, it looks like the whale is just...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorgore
"The world-organism is awake and has spent the last decade playing round after round of tic-tac-toe with itself. Hearing this the first time, Anais reacts like anyone would to a stranger sitting next to them on a plane, insisting on conversation for the...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssubstance-use
"When I was young, I used to fray apart my mother’s tales, seeking the threads of their structure. They were journeys, always, and marked by transition-places: doorway, gate, river. On the other side, someone offered the rules of this new environment. I...
Content warnings 1
violence
"Iris is deep in an empty ocean, gray-green twilight fading to black everywhere she looks—and she can breathe. She’s a thousand feet above the ground, climbing a fractal cliff suffused with flickering veins of electricity—and she cannot. Iris is flat on...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"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’s six weeks ’til Going Time. I never really got used to that naming convention. The phrase has “Going” and “Time” in it, the latter carrying the entire weight of the definition. The former is vague. Going where? Beneath the crusty morass of our...
Content warnings 1
death
"The young rag-smasher halts on a terrace. He chases his breath, gazing down on the waterfront. Even from this distance, the bustle lends him an odd calm. Brisk trade means things are running. No one’s starving, not even beggars. Down there, people...
Content warnings 1
violence
"It forced itself to take that last step onto the ferry. Every step further from land felt like falling. Through space, through time, through every place it had ever been. It kept its eyes open, its features arranged in what it hoped was a neutral...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"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
"The cadaver drone makes an incision along the inside of each finger. My stomach curls, waiting for the blood, but of course there’s none left. The body has been dead for days, all the blood drained and replaced with a sweet-smelling formaldehyde formula....
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
There are worse things than a local gangster’s cronies lurking in New Jersey’s wetlands…
Content warnings 3
deathsubstance-useviolence
"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
"The story of Chef Buzzati’s sudden and horrifying fall from the heights of fine dining is well known. However, given that the culinary innovations and legal ramifications are still being debated today, a recap may be in order. Elena Buzzati was born to...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorcannibalism
A Russian émigré poet living in Paris is visited by a mysterious bear with an agenda…
Prosperity City’s corrupt mayor never guessed his greatest opponent would be a fire-breathing dragon and her unconventional platform…
Content warnings 1
violence
"I am waiting for Helen on her fiftieth birthday. On the table, there’s a crystal drinking glass and a vase with rare orchids; I can’t tell if the flowers are genuine or not. Faint piano notes and a cold scent drift in the air. Beautiful men and women sit...
"War meant a new life for refrigeration unit B3RT4A—or Bertha, as her now-dead family liked to call her, before they’d been buried in the rubble of their kitchen. It meant she had to listen to the bomber-planes flying overhead day and night, had to hide in...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onewar
"and in a strip mall parking lot off a side road in some Baltimore suburb my hand is trembling as I take the last of the voidwater in its little bootleg dropper and I peel my eyelid back and though I am so careful and try so hard a bit of the precious...
Content warnings 3
self-harmsubstance-usesuicide
"Hi, we were both in Central Square on Friday, around 9:30 PM. I’m a tall trans lady with brown hair and glasses. You were standing in front of Sonia with some people. You were looking at your phone and then you looked up at me. Our eyes met for—I’m sorry,...
"It’s a few minutes before seven on a cold October evening and I’m just reaching into the bottom drawer of my desk for the Old Monk and my well-thumbed copy of The Big Sleep when I hear footsteps hurrying up the stairs. A new case, has to be. I sigh, give...
"In Greece, we have a saying: You must eat the body part you want to grow stronger. Or maybe that’s just something my grandmother used to say. After partying with friends until the early hours, Katerina and I take a detour before we go home. The meat...
Chelle’s friend, Wenqian, has everything Chelle doesn’t. A slim figure, pale skin, and most notably the affection of her longtime friend Preston. Like the ocean waves she calls home, Chelle feels transparent and overflowing all at once. So when she’s given...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
"You remember when those rappers robbed a bank and killed a cop, that summer the girls from Wing turned green? I didn’t think it was connected then—the robbery, the gold, and the hordes of teens who were rotting from the inside. But I know better now."
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
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
"If you’re reading this—on some godforsaken imageboard, or dog-eared book page, or in encrypted base pairs sequenced off 3D-printed oligos—you’re probably grappling with a pretty tough decision right now. Breathe. I’m not judging you. I know how it goes....
Content warnings 1
pregnancy-loss
"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
"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
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death
"You are the unalive thing possessing her body. Her body was printed three days ago from blueprints transferred moments before the motorbike crash over the bridge. Her flesh and fat and keratin and bone are accurate to prior specifications, except for the...
"Matt tells the waiter he’ll have his eggs over easy. They come back scrambled, a neat glistening pile framed by perfect triangles of toast, a lacy froth of hashbrowns lurking across the plate. He doesn’t notice he’s chosen to move until he’s already...
Content warnings 1
suicide
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
The year is 1915, and a young man hired to shout the words on title cards for silent films experiences the magic of movies. This spurs him to edit some of the worst dialog, leading him in a weird direction that utterly changes his life.
"Home brews coffee; black, no sugar. She maintains the temperature of the coffee at precisely sixty degrees Celsius. Most of the coffee sloshes over the jagged edges of the half-shattered mug. Rough holes have been torn through the matte plastic back of...
"Ti came to see me, you know. Three four days before she died. Knocked right on my door, and I’ve never been so surprised in all my life. This is a woman who when we were on tour would have the driver drive her halfway down the block rather than walk to...
Content warnings 1
death
"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 minister’s wife arrives at the Bahrain Ministry of Nanotechnology in a black limousine with dark, tinted windows. She normally eschews the hijab, but today, she’s wrapped in a black abaya with a full face covering, a useful method of concealing her...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"The sign on the door said Dreams Not Sold Here, and I mostly stuck to it. Dreams were extensive and exhausting projects, not to mention expensive. Nightmares, on the other hand, were quick. On a good day, I could stitch up a hundred off-the-rack ones:...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Haunted by stories he hears while on jury duty, a documentary filmmaker finds himself in an abandoned mall at the dead of night.
"Witchcraft is a gift. Imelda would wave her steel spoon at Mercer and insist on this as he measured ingredients for her, whether she was boiling potions or a pot of farfalle pasta. Watch the salt, a teaspoon only, never pour too much. Don’t overheat the...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"The emergency call came in before the seagulls had even started crying. It found Quinn lying sleepless on the leaky air mattress she’d set up in the back of the shop... She fumbled for her phone and raised an eyebrow at the severity rating the user had...
"The blade of Legrue’s scalpel flared in his headlamp’s narrow beam, casting glints of light across the slender hand strapped to his cutting table. “Deed done?” the woman asked, a warble in her voice. Legrue adjusted his magnifiers. He had not eaten in...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath
"The ghosts the hollow-eyed girl in Junction Square was selling billowed from her basket in wispy ribbons, whipping and fluttering in wind I could not feel, their tantalizing snap and shudder of cloth lighter than air, heavier than sorrow. I saw her from...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"Two days after my brother turned seventeen, he was gone, just like he’d guaranteed my dad. No sad goodbyes, no notes, no taking a knee in the hall before dawn to give me any good advice for high school when I got there. My mom’s story when anybody asked...
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
"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
"The day they took my mouth hadn’t been spent eating De la Rosas, or smoking, or spitting. In fact, I hadn’t used my mouth in any way that you might expect someone who was about to lose their sense of taste, their tongue, their voice, might have."
"I’ve been feeling a bit down, I suppose,’ Catherine said, ‘and my friend recommended you. She said you might be able to help.’ The doctor made a humming noise. He sat back, folding his arms. ‘Do you know what it means to cleanse, Catherine?’ he asked."
Content warnings 1
body-horror
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
Trina Nelson is a pretty, popular sixteen-year-old high school student whose idyllic life took a turn for the tragic because of the Wild Cards virus. Now, she wants nothing more than to live out her days in the shadowy anonymity of the Jokertown on the...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"For the longest time I could only get sliding jobs. It didn’t depress me, though; it seemed like a natural place to start. There was still time. I was sleeping rough in Wellington when I got my first job. I hitched from Palmy into the Hutt and started...
The Path Through Time” is Jules’s favorite part of the museum, a marvelous exhibit that brings the past to life, from the present all the way back to the prehistoric. Tonight at his aunt’s wedding reception as Jules walks along the path, it comes alive...
Bab Yaga from the fairy tales turns up in modern-day San Francisco looking for help tracking down her house, which has run away.
In a world dying from pollution by micro plastics, Ana struggles to protect her family, but even the food they eat is slowly killing them.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
Ava can make it big if she can just win the prize for best coffee in an upcoming reality show. And she knows just the equipment she needs, even if she has to steal it.
Today’s a big day at work, but just walking there looks to be a death-defying challenge, what with people randomly turning into monsters and such.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
You just drive the getaway car, for the same heist, over and over, trying somehow not to break the artifact that resets time.
"Dong Fang still clearly remembers the joyous love of that rainy night. It seemed quite bad at first. After three years of dating and two years of marriage, their formerly shy and sweet explorations had become routine business. Nevertheless, he was in the...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"The air over Chicago was thick with drones. There were at least two dozen I could see from the beach. Most were small, no more than slow-moving specks against the clouds, probably simple reconnaissance units. But at higher altitudes the big Venezuelan...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
When Candice gets upset, she sometimes spontaneously combusts and then comes back to life. She needs to get this under control because her family can’t afford the medical bills.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
Ruby is a powerful “Ace” who cynically does dirty jobs for bad people who help her keep her pain under control. Her world changes when a job puts her in contact with an elusive, childish, but very powerful Ace who won’t give in.
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abusedeath
Despite being paralyzed on one side, T.K. insists on going to gym class, even though the other girls torment her in dodge ball. Up to the point where the tormenting brings out her specialized telekinetic ability.
A young couple has enough relationship troubles without a mischievous dog that appears to have telekinetic powers. But there seems to be a pattern to its mischief.
Noah is a busy man with a lot of work to do on the moon since he and his partner went independent, but his wife’s illness is a big distraction, and there are hints that other things are seriously wrong.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
A young Wall Street investment banker tells how he lost a billion dollars in a Bitcoin for black people.
Content warnings 1
suicide
In an alternate 2018, A teenage roadie at a Who concert risks his life by using his sonic ability to try to save lives when a fire engulfs the building.
Content warnings 2
substance-useviolence
Phoebe goes to her late Mother’s townhouse to dispose of her effects and to reckon with the feelings she’s never been able to articulate.
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
In the Third World, a teenage girl sees her whole family killed and flees with her brother. In Washington, an old woman gradually gives up on life. Somehow, their paths cross.
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicwar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
A road is so nasty that it attains consciousness when it becomes aware of just how “not-nice” it really is.
Content warnings 1
death
A future Korea requires government proof of identity before you can access the Internet, and the narrator tells about her sister, who was a subversive trying to enable an uncensored, anonymous system.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-violenceviolence
While one man spends all his income on dreams, another works hard creating those dreams.
Content warnings 1
death
In a future where successful people spend most of their time in cyberspace, Martha struggles to make ends meet servicing the systems that take care of them.
Content warnings 1
death
The Owen corporation has brought some dinosaurs through their “gate,” and Dr. Crimshaw thinks she can use sign language to communicate with one of them.
The Golden Crusader must be getting old or something. He’s not so fast anymore, and he never flies higher than the sixth floor, but he keeps doing super deeds. Or trying to.
Cyber-terrorists used Aki, a humanoid robot, for their attack on Sentionics Corp, and now the police need to figure out what they did and how they did it.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Mixie’s family makes food for the dead to get them to come back to answer questions for their loved ones. She’s surprised her ex-husband’s widow wants them to do this, though.
Content warnings 1
death
A retired superhero and a conspiracy theorist join forces to gather evidence against a mobster who’s trying to force their friend to sell her property to him.
Content warnings 1
violence
Hengis knows his civilization will collapse when technology fails and magic takes its place, but there’s one last case he wants to solve before the lights go out.
An account of various famous artists, writers, and musicians who lived in Manhatttan in the 1930s.
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
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
When James was dying, he and his wife, Cat, worked to build an AI based on his personality that could keep her company in his absence. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
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
Sheru is a dog in an Indian city. He’s captured by researchers experimenting with deep learning. And he’s sad.
In early 20th-Century India, an old woman and her son are forced out of the forest and try to make a new life in the city.
Hand-written notes in a book about imaginary places tell a woman’s story of her attempt to survive a fascist takeover of the United States.
In midwinter, just after midnight, the narrator hitches a ride with a strange woman as cold as the night itself.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
Teenage Brit enjoys teaching little kids at a Seattle Experience Outreach camp, even though she senses that something evil haunts the abandoned bunkers up the hill.
Content warnings 1
suicide
The narrator and his friend are racing towards Florida running away from the drug dealer they repossessed it from. But something worse is waiting in front of them.
Viorica attempts to steal the famed Şiret Mask from Codruţ, brother of her dear friend. There are lots of complications, not least of which that Codruţ expects someone to try to take it.
Maria is a super model in a future that doesn't hesitate to modify the bodies of the models for maximum impact.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
In 1880s London, Sir Arthur's "Illogic Engine" has gone missing, so he seeks help from Mycroft Holmes.
There's a quiet war in Boulder between hikers and cyclists, but whatever ripped two hikers' throats out must have been the cyclist from Hell.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"Michael sips his coffee, watching the screen automatically cycle through vidfeeds coming in from across the country, lingering just long enough to hit the relevant button. He knows the dominionist rhetoric, had heard it in the media, read it when he...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
goretransphobiaviolence
"Here at 123aiLOVEu, we take all the guesswork out of dating. With personalized chatbots trained on social media and chat histories, we put you in conversation with hundreds of potential matches... and you never have to say a thing! Sandra was watching the...
"You were six the first time you had a vision of someone’s death—your parents. The vision came when y’all were walking to the park and you were between them, holding their hands and heading towards the monkey bars. The vision was blurry and foggy like...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-content
"On a Thursday night in Harvestmonth, when the moon rises round and bronze as a new betrothal promise watch, is the warlike thrice-veiled Mother of Mákhesthaines, crowned in her black silk mantles embroidered with skulls, permitted across the Holy Square...
Content warnings 1
death
Nothing tears two women apart like the men who want and take indiscriminately. In this retelling of “The Crane Wife”, a makeup artist and her actress lover struggle to stay together as the glitz and glamour of old Hollywood transforms into a cruel and...
Content warnings 3
abusemisogynyviolence
"My spirit aches. Reality is severed. I’m trapped in a glass room. Time is water, streaming by. I’m underwater in the current of time, watching time float by. My hand on the room’s thick glass, unable to shatter it, unable to get out. Even if I escape,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorracismsexual-content
"At least when I tell the fucking machine I don’t want pickles, it remembers that I don’t want pickles. Now, what goes on behind the counter is another story. They hire people who can barely read. But at least I’m trusting my order to something...
"One: My lipstick. The shade is Heart’s Blood. Morbid, if you ask me. I wanted to know if it was really the color of heart’s blood so I bought beef heart and tried dabbing my lips. Close enough. I emailed to congratulate the lipstick company on their...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death
Night Soil, of course, is human feces, but the salvagers to more than just collect that; they deliver other things too—if you’re willing to deal with them, that is.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
abuse
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
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
An interview with a simulation of the dead artist, Satka, who still has a big online following years after her death.
Content warnings 3
deathsuicidewar
Shi handles elderly clients who are recruited to help steer starships through space. Her job is winding up, and one of her last clients presents a special challenge.
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
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
When her mother is absorbed into the local flesh monolith, Kayla struggles with her identity and looks for a way in. Content warnings: Violence, nudity, racism/discrimination, body horror Copyright © 2026 khōréō magazine. Story by Mary Miseon Wu, edited by...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorracismviolence
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
I am not here to talk about how i got my arm, i am looking for hel p trying to fix it . Apologies for typos the f fingers lag a lot
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Part 1: 2075 <It might be good for you to take a new route,> said Aly. Xavi jogged out of his tenement building. He joined the stream of lunchtime runners […]
Content warnings 2
substance-usewar
This episode features "Aly" written by Grace Chan. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/chan_05_26 Support us on Patreon at...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesswar
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
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 : Myna Chang Narrator : Amanda Ching Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Graduated Justice originally appeared in Translunar Travelers Lounge, February 2025. Graduated Justice: An Amelia Li Mystery By Myna Chang I was leaning against...
Content warnings 1
death
Author : S. C. Mills Narrator : Hugo Jackson Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1040: Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses is an Escape Pod original. Loss of an infant Sponsored by Mixtape Stories Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses by S....
Content warnings 1
child-death
Author : Rati Mehrotra Narrator : Joe Moran Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht The Library of the Apocalypse was first published in Clarkesworld, May 2025, Issue 224. Includes death and cursing. The Library of the Apocalypse By Rati Mehrotra...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
Author : Kiran Kaur Saini Narrator : Kaushik Narasimhan Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Amrit originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2023. Kiran Kaur Saini https://kirankaursaini.com/ Kaushik...
Author : Sylvie Althoff Narrator : Jess Lewis Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1050: Freebooter is an Escape Pod original. Moderate use of harsh language. Freebooter by Sylvie Althoff The pirate bot was easy to miss....
Content warnings 1
violence
Author : Jo Miles Narrator : Julia Rios Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Escape Pod 1051: You Have Arrived at Your Destination is an Escape Pod original. You Have Arrived at Your Destination By Jo Miles It starts with an accident. A dreary...
Author : Ethan Ham Narrator : Elie Hirschman Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Escape Pod 1053: The Game of Possibilities is an Escape Pod original. Ethan Ham https://www.ethanham.com/index.html?second-edition Elie Hirschman...
It’s the second Thursday of the month, so I spend the evening regenerating my skin. The procedure is painless but dull. I often fall asleep. It’s fine to do so; […]
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
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
Maybe we overestimated ourselves, I thought, watching the ferries hum against the wine-dark sea. Even if we floated above it, we were still bound to the ocean, engulfed in all its weight and inescapable history. To believe otherwise was a kind of hubris....
“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
Normally, Tillie didn’t mind being the object of everyone’s gaze. But today, the crowd loitering in the street wasn’t drawn to her orange-red curls or her height or regalness. They […]
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
LA NDRY or L UNDRY. Those were the two choices. You never knew which one you were gonna get. The letters took turns to be fickle, blinking and spluttering in a game of chance. Mr. Lee, the laundry-mat owner, was stingy with the upkeep. He let his...
Author : C. T. Muchemwa Narrator : Munashe R. Goromonzi Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie Previously published by FIYAH 33 (February 2025) Content note for gore Rated PG-13 The Inheritance by C. T. Muchemwa Taona did not shed a single tear...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
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 : C. L. Clark Narrator : Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali Host : Wanini Kimemiah Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie Previously ran as episode 519 as a PodCastle Original Rated PG-13 Burning Season By C. L. Clark It was burning season in Rashid. Again. Even in the...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
Author : Charlotte Ashley Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Ziv Wities Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie Previously ran as episode 517 and first published in Fantasy & Science Fiction. Rated PG-13 A Fine Balance By Charlotte Ashley My mistress, Shoanna Yildirim,...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Author : J. L. Akagi Narrator : Jo Moran Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 947: Why a Spider Needs a Parachute is a PodCastle original. Content notes for domestic violence and spiders. Big — friendly! — spiders Rated R Why a Spider...
Content warnings 3
abusetransphobiaviolence
Authors : Bree Wernicke and AnaMaria Curtis Narrators : Kat Kourbeti and C. L. Clark Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie PodCastle 948: DOUBLE EPISODE: How I Did Not Make Friends With Teniel eu Letxie and The Gift of Her Light is a PodCastle...
His app was called Promises Promises, and its download page was one of the last things in Ellie’s search history—behind two hundred chapters of Fruits Basket and six clickbait articles with titles all on the pattern of “17 Spectacular Strategies to...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
Everyone knows the Walls around the cities fell. What some people don’t remember is that the first one fell because of a laugh. It sounded like a ringing bell. Not like it came out of a baby at all. That was the first thing I told the scholar boy. He was a...
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
The typewriter proved, at first glance, to be a poor investment for a daring aerial escape. Kallista had been drawn to the typewriter from the moment she viewed it languishing in a Museum of Curioddities, a pun that 3% of Pennon City’s citizens might...
On a wooded hillside outside Pittsburgh, where the rivers braid together and the bridges flash yellow in the sun, there stands an old private school no one ever remembers enrolling in. Ivy grips its cracked bricks. Moss blurs the leaded windows. To almost...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
This episode features "The Scent of Memory" written by Zhao Haihong and translated by S. Qiouyi Lu. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
Out in the great expanse of cosmos, little seeds float. They have been drifting for billions of years in the cold darkness of space from one planet to the other, driven by the need for survival and propagation, but most of all driven by spite (they will...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
Content Warning: Mentions of hurt children On Saturday morning, Amélia received a call from the Santa Minerva Nursing Home for the Empowered Elderly. They didn’t use to call except for urgent matters. It could only mean one thing: Vovó had passed away....
Because it’s Carnaval, Iara wears a striped pirate shirt and a red pirate headband. And because of who she is, she sits on the bathroom floor, closes her eyes, and wears the perspectives of seven alley cats, three stray dogs, and a single pigeon for the...
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
Abuelita has been feeding me her memories. Yesterday, it was the time she trudged up the mountain carrying a basketful of offerings for Pachamama (flowers, incense, a llama sculpted out of animal fat and adorned with gold leaf) in hopes the Earth Mother...
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
I beg you, let me tell you about my daughter. My brilliant daughter will be one of the four people who survive their airplane crashing into a giant. Or, more accurately, a giant swiping their airplane out of the sky. Perhaps it meant to catch, or caress....
Content warnings 1
death
"At night, Olivia becomes a spider. She scurries down San Francisco streets, floats gently between cotton-candy-colored houses, and hides behind signs for trendy restaurants, like Trough and Instance. By day, she works as a software engineer for a company...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse By Ryan Cole In the dark of her bed, curled up in her sheets, Susie tried to hide from the next few days and the reckoning they’d bring: of prom and graduation and the dozens of goodbyes she’d have to force herself...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorhomophobia
Billionaire's Tears By Vanessa Ricci-Thode I wake up to the sound of screaming, and know I’m going to die. I shoot out of bed, calling for my mother. First thing I’ve spoken clearly in two days. “Maria!” My mother bursts into my room. “Baby, what’s wrong?”...
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemictransphobia
Author : Tim Pratt Narrator : A Kovacs Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Observer Effects” originally appeared in Diet Soap (2007), and was originally presented in Escape Pod 350 Contains harsh language Escape Pod is proud to say that...
Content warnings 1
suicide
Author : Elly Bangs Narrator : Christiana Ellis Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Space Pirate Queen of the Ten Billion Utopias” was first published in Lightspeed Magazine in November 2021 Copious amounts of casual strong language. This...
Author : Diana Wynne Jones Narrator : Emma Newman Hosts : Mur Lafferty and Alasdair Stuart Audio Producers : Adam Pracht and Mat Weller Samantha’s Diary originally appeared in Stories: All-New Tales Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio and on Escape...
Once Abandoned By A.P. Hawkins Sappel whistled as he walked to the construction site, the sound echoing off nearby buildings in a muffled way. It was early spring, and the city was bursting with the vibrant green of new growth. Wild edibles sprouted from...
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...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsuicideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
violence
"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....
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abuseself-harm
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrormental-illnessself-harm
"We are very, very disappointed.” It was her third try, and it still came out feebly. “We thought we made it super clear that any, any change in material, maker hand, machine, or method, however small or irrelevant it may seem, must be notified...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-abuseself-harm
Author : C. H. Irons Narrator : Elie Hirschman Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 922: The Last Oracle of Atlantic City is an Escape Pod original. This episode is sponsored by The Theater of the Midnight Sun podcast:...
Author : David Marino Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 925: The Ballad of Starburst Smith is an Escape Pod original. Contains harsh language. The Ballad of Starburst Smith by David Marino “Did you read...
Author : David Hankins Narrator : Eric Valdes Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Felix and the Flamingo” was originally published in the anthology Murderbirds (January 2023). To learn more about Bruiser the Rat, check out “Milo Piper’s...
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
The Library By N. B. Andersen Every morning at ten to ten, Dot powered on. Its hands lay flat against the thick glass of the reading room window, which let the photoreceptors on its palms feast on the sun. The window overlooked a modest lot where cars had...
Author : Tim Chawaga Narrator : James Kaku Pierson Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 938: Chug the Tea Leaves, Chuck the Ads is an Escape Pod original. Chug the Tea Leaves, Chuck the Ads by Tim Chawaga I wake up to a message and...
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
Alternate Cover: Pantone Sunset By Marie Vibbert Stacey reads a comic book. It’s about a robot lady, but not like her. This robot lady has exposed gears and metal rods in her arms and wears a metallic bikini as she solves crimes. The colors are...
The Concept Shoppe: A Rocky Cornelius Consultancy By Andrew Dana Hudson “This place is trash, garbágio, blechalicious,” Rocky Cornelius said appreciatively. “All we gotta do is, as they say, sublevel the vibe.” “Really? You think so?” The greengrocer,...
Content warnings 1
violence
Author : Eugie Foster Narrator : Mur Lafferty Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story was first published in Escape Pod 388 (March 21, 2013) Contains harsh language and graphic gory violence Trixie and the Pandas of Dread by Eugie...
Content warnings 3
goreracismviolence
Rupert Weard and the Case of the Adamant Annihilist By Rob Gillham Rupert Weard leapt into the drawing room, escaping a hallway dense with impossibly angled, tentacular horrors trying to sell him insurance. "Ye gods, it's bedlam out there," he said. "Just...
Author : Samantha Henderson Narrator : Mur Lafferty Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Chandra’s Game” originally appeared in Lone Star Stories (2009), and in Escape Pod 373. Chandra’s Game by Samantha Henderson Joey Straphos, Papa Joe,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
Author : Sylvie Althoff Narrator : Serah Eley Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 955: Endymion is an Escape Pod original. Contains transphobic slur, adult language, and brief but graphic violence Endymion by Sylvie Althoff It’s...
Content warnings 3
goretransphobiaviolence
Author : Marissa Lingen Narrator : The Word Whore Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Originally appeared in Analog (2011), and in Escape Pod 366 (Oct 2012) Some of Them Closer by Marissa Lingen Coming back to Earth was not the immediate...
Code Switching By Malon Edwards [JEAN-MICHEL] INTRO: ALL I'M EVER GON' DO IS STAY BLACK AND DIE JEAN-MICHEL FEAT. KINSLEY CHASE Kinsley Chase sits on manman mwen plastic-covered couch. The InTell HumbleBrag subprogram Stanford Sutton Industries chipped me...
Content warnings 1
racism
Code Switching (Part 2 of 4) By Malon Edwards (...Continued from Part 1) [JEAN-MICHEL] ONE HUNDRED PERCENT PERFORMANCE OUTPUT JEAN-MICHEL FEAT. KINSLEY CHASE Lòske jounalis sa yo gade m— Hold up. Let me say that again. I'll wait. Y'all go grab y'alls paper...
Content warnings 2
racismwar
Code Switching (Part 3 of 4) By Malon Edwards (...Continued from Part 2) [JEAN-MICHEL] A SWEET-ASS HELICOPTER AND TEN STATER STRANGERS? JEAN-MICHEL FEAT. THE NAUGHTY NINETY-DAY FANDANGO I'm feelin' this Bell 525 Relentless like Ellen Gilchrist playin' bid...
Content warnings 3
racismviolencewar
Code Switching (Part 4 of 4) By Malon Edwards (...continued from Part 3) 12. THIS IS THE TRUTELL MICHAËLLE-ANNABELLE FEAT. JEAN-MICHEL I strap into my rig, take a really big swig from my hydration dispenser tube I call The Ultra Black Vig, and settle back...
Content warnings 3
racismviolencewar
Author : Cat Rambo Narrator : Tina Connolly Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Red in Tooth and Cog” originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 2016, and was previously published in Escape Pod 607 Red in Tooth and...
Hey, George By Elizabeth Guilt "Hey, George." I remind myself that that is not my name; it never was. I will myself not to react, not to break stride, as I stroll along beside the beach. Old habits die hard, and the best neuro-reset in the world can't...
Author : Linda Niehoff Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 883: Just Us and the Mannequins is an Escape Pod original. Brief mention of suicidal ideations Just Us and the Mannequins by Linda Niehoff It was...
Content warnings 1
suicide
Zhao and the Flightless Crane By A. J. Mo Quick sapphires danced over sun-silvered water. Soundless, they zipped and wheeled to the quiet rhythm of filtration pumps. Dragonflies, Zhao thought. Other winged jewels joined the flurry, some green as spring,...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
The Revolution, Brought to You by Nike By Andrea Phillips 1. THE BRIEF Corazon clicked to the slide she’d been dreading: long-term trends for brand engagement. It was dire. She focused on the smudgy mirror at the far end of the conference room, looking...
Author : Andrea Phillips Narrator : Julia Rios Hosts : Valerie Valdes and Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks The Revolution, Brought to You by Nike originally appeared in Fireside Magazine in February 2017 and first played on Escape Pod Episode...
Content warnings 1
violence
Author : Francis Bass Narrator : Valerie Valdes Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story was previously published in Uncharted Magazine in May 2022 The Mechanical Turk Has a Panic Attack by Francis Bass Gab gripped her right wrist...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
Author : LP Kindred Narrator : LP Kindred Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story originally appeared in Anathema: Spec from the Margins (July 2022) Content warning for NSFW language, sex Wanderlust by L. P. Kindred When he first...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesexual-content
Author : Derrick Boden Narrator : Valerie Valdes Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story originally appeared in the August 2022 issue of Clarkesworld. Migratory Patterns of the Modern American Skyscraper by Derrick Boden They call it...
A Gentlemen's Agreement By Aimee Ogden Heroes are such fragile things. Sphinx takes in the scene from a distance, first, as is his custom. He makes a wide orbit around the pillars of smoke and the pathetic caution-tape bandages. The first responders are...
Content warnings 2
goreviolence
Author : Jei D. Marcade Narrator : Amanda Ching Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Sounding the Fall” is an Escape Pod Original, first published in July 2015. Sounding the Fall by Jei D. Marcade Sometimes, Narae can almost convince...
Author : Heather Kamins Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 910: Tuesday, June 13, at the South Valley Time Loop Support Group is an Escape Pod original. Tuesday, June 13, at the South Valley Time Loop...
Content warnings 2
suicideviolence
Author : Cameron Fischer Narrator : Dave Robison Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 912: The Retcon Man is an Escape Pod original. The Retcon Man by Cameron Fischer Never look for evidence of your future self in the past. Doing...
Content warnings 1
violence
#buttonsinweirdplaces By Simon Kewin The buttons started to appear on the last day of April, 2022. A six-year-old boy from Nairobi, Jomi Mbenzi, was perhaps the first to spot one. Dawdling along behind his mother, her swaying yellow-orange dress and the...
#buttonsinweirdplaces (Part 2 of 2) By Simon Kewin (... Continued from Part 1) The news the following morning was bad. An explosion in the middle of a market-square in Libya had been variously blamed upon a suicide-bomber and upon over-zealous security...
Content warnings 1
violence
Author : Ava Kelly Narrator : Ben Gideon Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “The Confessionist” was previously published in the anthology: Community of Magic Pens, edited by E.D.E. Bell, released May 2020 by Atthis Arts The Confessionist...
Author : Tim Pratt Narrator : Amy H. Sturgis Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story originally aired in Escape Pod 622 (April 2018) Some cursing. Suggestions of violence and death. Anna and Marisol in Time and Space by Tim Pratt The...
Content warnings 3
deathhomophobiaviolence
Challenges to Becoming a Pro Dragonracer in Apapa-Downtown By Uchechukwu Nwaka The gear is too expensive. Honestly. There isn’t enough competition in the market. The Immersion® console alone costs an arm and a leg. Ọmọ. You’ll sweat to even get a...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Author : Benjamin C. Kinney Narrator : Eric Valdes Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Conference of the Birds” originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact (January 2021) Contains some harsh language. This episode is sponsored...
Tony Roomba's Last Day on Earth By Maria Haskins It’s Tony Roomba’s last day on Earth. After two years of working undercover as a vacuum cleaner bot on this boondock planet, he is finally heading home to the Gamma Sector, but his final day is full of...
Payday Weather By Matthew Claxton We wound our way up the curving canyon roads in overloaded pickups and hatchbacks, corners taken too fast, sagging bumpers kissing asphalt, engines redlining from effort and heat. Our procession passed an exodus going the...
Content warnings 1
violence
Build-A-Body By Avi Burton When I was eighteen, I ordered a body off the internet. It was actually kind of easy. I was old enough to remember when the first successful human transfer was performed— the consciousness of a paralyzed young man was dropped...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
Author : Maurice Broaddus Narrator : Hollis Monroe Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums City of Refuge originally appeared in Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology, November 2020. Contains harsh language, violence, and...
Content warnings 3
racismsubstance-useviolence
Author : Renan Bernardo Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in World Science Fiction #2: Reloading the Future (July 2021) Anticipation of Hollowness by Renan Bernardo Having...
Deepo 12 By Jeff Hewitt Nothing made Deepo 12 feel more alive than doing its job. Its actuators sighed as another cassette slid from its workstation, tinted blastic masking the rainbow sheen of the wafers inside. Dim strip lights curved over the protective...
Content warnings 1
violence
Love and Supervillains By Caroline Diorio The gals here at the Raleigh Women’s Asylum for the Nefariously Gifted have a little saying they like to share with the newbies: fuck a superhero once, shame on him; fuck a superhero twice, shame on you. Well,...
Content warnings 3
cannibalismgoresexual-content
Author : Jordan Chase-Young Narrator : Justin Thomas James Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of The Colored Lens (October 15 2020). The Vaulting Vandals of Termina Celeste (Part 1) by Jordan...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
Author : Jordan Chase-Young Narrator : Justin Thomas James Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of The Colored Lens (October 15, 2020) The Vaulting Vandals of Termina Celeste (Part 2) by Jordan...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Across the River, My Heart, My Memory By Ann LeBlanc 1. I am Michelle’s artificial pancreas, stolen cleanly and carefully from her gut. The surgeons are quick; before I can finish my hard reset, they place me inside you. I don’t even have time to say...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Author : Laurence Raphael Brothers Narrators : Adam Pracht and Summer Brooks Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Houseproud” originally appeared in the SciFutures “City of the Future” anthology and also won the Berkeley Machine Intelligence...
Laser Squid Goes House Hunting By Douglas DiCicco "This one has everything on your checklist." I held open the front door of the four-bedroom colonial. It wasn't quite big enough for my client, who left greasy marks on the doorframe as she squeezed...
Author : C.C. Finlay Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Time Bomb Time” originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of Lightspeed Magazine. It was reprinted in Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy...
Content warnings 1
abuse
By Meg Elison (Continued from Part 1) The Pill sold like nothing had ever sold before. The original, the generic, the knockoffs, the different versions approved in Europe and Asia that met their standards and got rammed through their testing. There was at...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-content
Any Other Customer By Rachel Gutin Lewis was poking at his tablet, trying yet again to open the training module from Station Commerce, when the sensor above his shop door chimed. “Not now!” he snapped without looking up. “But… but I….” Blast it! His tailor...
Tloque Nahuaque By Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas, translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. —Carl Sagan I—The Particle Accelerator They built an underground temple. A well of Babel...
Content warnings 3
cannibalismchild-deathsuicide
The Dame With the Earth at Her Back By Sarah Pauling That’s the trouble with Teegarden’s northern latitudes: the sun never sets in summer. The red glow assaults Maryellen’s stage long after midnight, pushing in through the picture window alongside the...
The Call of the Sky By Cliff Winnig The army hospital’s underground floors reminded me of Pluto Base, a place I’d never actually been. I’d never even been off-world, but I remembered those claustrophobic beige corridors. Two years before, I’d synced with a...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathwar
Electronic Ghosts By Innocent Chizaram Ilo I If Nneora had died two weeks earlier, her daughter, Anaeto, would not have resurrected her ghost. That was the night Nneora ran a fever, laid convulsing in bed, a slimy froth trickling from the corners of her...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Death, the Universe, and Everything By Sherin Nicole The morning after it happened for the first time, I-- I’m not sure if I should tell you, but maybe you can tell me. If your understanding of reality fundamentally changes, does it change you? And how...
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
The Machine That Would Rewild Humanity By Tobias S. Buckell On a boat on the way to the Galapagos Islands to visit the world’s oldest tortoise, I got a call that the Central Park Human Reintroduction Center had been bombed. I’d read somewhere that the...
Content warnings 1
violence
Author : Sameem Siddiqui Narrator : Arun Jiwa Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums AirBody first appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (April 2020), and was the Winner of the 2020 Clarkesworld Readers Poll Contains some harsh...
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
Rights and Wrongs By Brian K. Lowe “Tell me again who I pissed off to get this job?” Carefully unwrapping my roast beef on wheat, I used the paper as a holder to keep mustard off of my lap. “I thought you wanted the job,” Rusty said. “I thought you were...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
Author : Lauren Ring Narrator : Alethea Kontis Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 796: One Hundred Seconds to Midnight is an Escape Pod original. One Hundred Seconds to Midnight By Lauren Ring I wake before the plane lands. It’s...
Content warnings 1
violence
Author : Ian Creasey Narrator : Pippa Alice Stephens Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums “No Strangers Any More” originally appeared in Analog (July/August 2016) No Strangers Any More (Part 1 of 2) by Ian Creasey One of a...
Author : Ian Creasey Narrator : Pippa Alice Stephens Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums “No Strangers Any More” originally appeared in Analog (July/August 2016) No Strangers Any More (Part 2 of 2) by Ian Creasey Royal...
Give Me Cornbread or Give Me Death By N.K. Jemisin The intel is good. It had better be; three women died to get it to us. I tuck away the binoculars and crawl back from the window long enough to hand-signal my girls. Fire team moves up, drop team on my...
Content warnings 3
goreracismviolence
Hard Mother, Spider Mother, Soft Mother By Hal Y. Zhang “Did you see the report on the spy from Aberdeen? The game is a-foot.” I mumbled something like “No, sounds interesting.” All I remember is my usual annoyance at her ability to pronounce hyphens where...
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
Author : Christopher Mark Rose Narrator : Tad Callin Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums “Sentient Being Blues” first appeared in the March/April 2021 issue of Asimov’s Death of a child, also contains some violence and...
Content warnings 3
child-deathgoreviolence
A Dragon in Two Parts By Kiya Nicoll “‘Shed your skin and spread your wings to fly’,” I read off the sign. The letters were done in a sort of swooshy font and punctuated by yellow and blue yin-yangy things at either end. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable...
Content warnings 1
suicide
"Cassie pulls her hood low over her forehead, keeps her eyes on the ground ahead of her. She wears face paint meant to fool facial recognition algorithms, though the cops think she’s dead. Her friends are. She should be. She circles the block twice,...
Content warnings 3
self-harmtransphobiaviolence
Where They Keep Their Promises By B. Pladek I imagine you eating the chocolate bar. It will arrive tomorrow, I hope, though the war has disrupted the medrunners’ routes between Chicago and London. It will arrive, though. I promise. I imagine you unwrapping...
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicwar
Jolene by Fiona Moore “I’ve got a case for you,” said Detective Inspector Wilhemine FitzJames. “It’s a country singer whose wife, dog and truck have all left him.” “Seriously,” she said, after my unprintable reply. “The dog died and there’s nothing much...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
Tru Luv By Sarah Pinsker The first three Tru fanatics were already waiting outside Meetspace when Molly arrived to open the bar. They were easy to recognize, pushing up their winter coats' sleeves and glancing at the insides of their wrists every two...
Following the death of her mother, Fiona buys a new house in order to start a new chapter of her life, one with fewer reminders of painful memories. Unbeknownst to Fiona, this house has a melancholy history, and slightly more ghosts than she anticipated....
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
sexual-violencesubstance-use
As climate change destroys Australia, the people sacrifice climate-change deniers to the giant koala bears that are attacking the cities.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Cyd’s suicide brings his friend Kelvin to Albany for his memorial.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsuicidetransphobia