Original Archives - Page 7 of 45

Early Wednesday morning, after a long weekend devoted to the search for her, twelve-year-old Amelia is spotted wandering home on the main highway out of town. She has at that point been missing since the previous Friday.

In Dec. 2024 (Issue 147)

Fiction

A Guide for Your Journey to the Green Hills

by R. K. Duncan

It’s a little difficult for me to think about the initial process of this piece because I’ve continued to think about it quite a lot since initially writing it, to the point where it’s now the kernel of a someday novel project about occupation by a victorious fairyland.

Fiction

Moon Rabbit Song

by Caroline Hung

2024 Shirley Jackson Award finalist Shirley Jackson Award finalist

The skies are a pitch-black void—cold, empty, unforgiving. Far from home, the rivers of heaven have run dry, the starlight scarce in this part of Father’s empire. Passing comets die out with a pathetic fizzle, and the migrating flocks of magpies care not to bridge the gap between star-crossed lovers.

Poetry

Sumbisori

by Jess Cho

“Sumbisori” refers to the peculiar exhale of the haenyeo-women divers in the Jeju Province of South Korea. When they surface, they let their breath out as a whistling sound that has always struck me as both a little eerie and a little lonely.

Fiction

She Sheds Her Skin

by Raven Jakubowski

2024 Stoker Award Finalist Stoker Award Finalists

Cora has left her skin lying out again. It’s the first thing I see when come in. Open the door, hang up my coat, kick off my heels, turn on the lamp, and there it is, slouched in the mid-century chair by the ratty sofa. Her empty skin, deflated, black sockets staring at me.

Fiction

NotRob

by Isabel Cañas

When my daughter was a newborn, I found I only had the attention span to write micro and flash; I wrote a lot of it. I was also sleeping very little at night and crashed most afternoons, which for me is when the weirdest dreams happen. “NotRob” was one of them.

Read
Listen
- Narrated by:
  
  Stefan Rudnicki + Janina Edwards
- Duration:
  
  0:12:05
- Buy eBook
Subscribe

Fiction

Perfect Water

by Simon Gilbert

Something tells you this two-pump station isn’t a contactless kind of place. Google Maps gave up the ghost several miles ago. You go inside and pay in cash. Diolch, you add, your one word of Welsh; the cashier replies with something you don’t follow.

Read
Listen
- Narrated by:
  
  Stefan Rudnicki
- Duration:
  
  0:18:53
- Buy eBook
Subscribe

Poetry

Possession

by Martins Deep

This poem was born after a strange empathy opened my eyes to Matthew 12:43-45—the Bible passage where Jesus teaches about demons wandering in the wilderness after a demon-possessed man is healed. Here, I tried to capture the persona’s body as a living space.

Fiction

Little Horn

by Gemma Files

This whole business, it all started right about when I burned my church down. Not one I went to, or ministered at—I mean the one built around me, raised by my very own personal worshippers, so they could do their sacrificial reverence to me in private.