Sci-Fi + Fantasy

Sir Robert wipes his bloody blade on his enemy’s doublet. The vicious Count Feyt lies on the chequered floor, a pool of brilliant red spreading beneath him. Andrea tries to move but the rope bites into her soft skin. The gentle breeze wafts the odour of death to her nostrils. Sir Robert turns to her, […]

I consider myself pretty lucky. Out of all the hospices in the Tri-State area, my doctor referred me to this one. Here, I have my own room. That’s not a given when it comes to hospices. Sometimes they’ll stick two of us, or even three, to a room. No thanks. I’m already confronting my own […]

Over the heavy walnut desk, the infofield displays several feet of electronic paperwork. Lilith Ambrose is three thumbprints and one e-signature away from being joined with Jacob for eternity. Again. In the weeks after they found out that Jacob’s cancer was back, that it had spread to his lungs and his brain, and that it […]

The experts touted survival rates early on, like surviving was a good thing.

“Come home, son,” he says. “It’s time to come home.” His voice sounds tinny, like he’s talking through a phone, which is ridiculous. We haven’t needed phones to communicate for decades. And besides, he’s standing right next to me. Only he isn’t. Because I’m gone, soaring, gliding, banking on the wind—and yes, there’s wind there, […]

Lorna says if we eat enough mushrooms our bodies will learn to grow gills.

Now in those days, wolves did not wear their teeth around their neck; they wore them in their mouth. They did not decorate their threshold with to-the-quick nail clippings; they allowed their claws to grow and curl. They did not keep their fur trimmed neatly, selling to their neighbors to stuff their pillows; they let […]

Henry loved the way the flowers sang. “They sound like wind blowing through an arctic canyon,” he said. “Like a children’s choir. But a good one, you know? Not cheesy.” His head lay on my chest and he pushed it into my hand, asking me to keep playing with his hair while I tried to […]

Heddera pressed the warm sonic node into the channel that separated the Dekteron’s fourth arm from his secondary shoulder blade. With a low hum from deep in her diaphragm, the pitch of the node changed and the Dekteron snarled his pleasure. For symmetry, she applied another node under his third arm on the other side and sang a dissonant twin pitch that shifted into a harmonic. His body arched so hard he almost fell off the table. She placed her hand on his back to steady him.

One day Lady Whitmer realized, with some distress, that she was at the bottom of the ocean. The last she could remember, she’d been on land in the spot where she eternally dwelled—the manor’s second-floor bedroom where she had been violently stabbed in her sleep by her vile husband, Beaumont, and his conniving mistress, Lucinda—and now she was floating in salty water. Not that she could taste the salt. Or anything at all.

On your fifteenth birthday at the bowling alley, your mother’s cheek turns to stone. You glimpse it for only a moment between blowing out the candles, and the sudden death of the flame. You aren’t sure what you see behind her brown eyes—was it just a twitch?—but you know somehow that the world is suddenly a less-safe pace.

I dig myself out of my house to start my patrol. When I emerge, the path I’ve made is already filling back in with fat, wet snow, blowing in all directions. It is ever trying to buffet me about, to billow me to the edge of town, to strike me snow-blind and wind-deaf so I lose my way, but I got my snow legs a long time long ago.