Sci-Fi + Fantasy

The children load me into the trailer. Padlock the tailgate. Take the dirt road past the sanitation plant, the tannery, the strip club, the gun store. I’ve known nowhere but the farm, the pen, the milk bottles & dust & feed. The children laugh in the cab, turn their muffled music up. I put my […]

*2025 Refractions: Genre Flash Fiction Prize 2nd Place Winner* “Choose to disconnect—yes or no.” The doctor turns a tablet toward Glettus. Glettus scans the med-bay, his hatchmates circling him, the other ailing bodies beyond his bed. He wants to feel angry—that delicious rage the hatch could stoke within each other ahead of a mission—but the […]

*2025 Refractions: Genre Flash Fiction Prize 3rd Place Winner* Viscous green fluid sloshes and nearly spills as its container is hurled down the slick café countertop. Mel reaches out to stop it, much to the amusement of the man behind the bar.  “Always wanted to try that!” He chuckles and snaps his suspenders. Mel says […]

Outside the International Space Station, I hook my white EMU boots beneath two metal rails and stretch, eliciting a sharp crack from my ribs. This EVA is taking forever. Alone, my partner replaced by a stupid, silent robot. The AIM (Artificially “Intelligent” Manipulator) looms over me like a goddamn death trap, its laser welder extended. […]

If it were anything other than a major hotel, the Kleiner-Hussain Spaceport Hotel would not have existed long enough to be this haunted, and yet. The problem with space travel has always been that ghosts dislocated from their origins are worse than ghosts left where they belong, and the problem with spaceport hotels has always […]

Dr Geistner asked the dead man on the table if everything had been satisfactory, and was pleased by his response. Pleased, and relieved. This latest success was just what Project Denouement needed. She leaned back in the plastic chair, which flexed to accommodate her movement, and removed the bulky VR headset. A ring of sweat […]

My green-black ears aren’t pointy enough, so I rub my fingers together just above the tips until they grow and sharpen. The guides say the best first date skin is an elf, so I’m elfing. It’s my first first date in a while. The scene is pretty different. For starters, I haven’t been single since […]

Cirque stole the elephant’s bridle from its gilded chest. In the lee where midnight loitered on the toes of dawn, Cirque pocketed all they could and fled the Stage for the last time. Weighed down by harlequin rockets, Soleil met them at the riverbank. She carried cherry bombs and nuclear fizzlers that glowed radium green […]

You leave before the birds can begin to sing. And though the elders rise, stone-faced, to strap a sword to your belt, no one comes with you; this is not their journey, after all, not the way it is yours. Color is finally bleeding back into the world when you slow to a stop before […]

“This,” her father says, the stone a matte black promise in his hand, “is how your ship will travel.” With a bravura flick, he throws it out onto the lake, but all she can focus on is the spike of tendons in his forearms, the frail human machinery of him suddenly revealed in this one […]

GERMINATION The first bud sprouts from Charlie’s left thumb. You think you’re dreaming. Another nightmare, but so much more fantastical than the ones you usually have. Charlie crashing his plane in the jungle. Charlie’s parachute failing. Charlie screaming as napalm melts flesh off bone. Charlie, reporting for duty one leg short, clumsily hefting a gun […]

The silhouette of the Pharos lighthouse floats on the water in the distance, its peak is like the eye of a god, always monitoring its subjects. I can see why it’s considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I’m standing on a hillside with my back to the library. Below me, the […]