story
Excrescence
R. F. DANIELS
It began as an itch in the back of my throat. Indistinguishable from the first hint of a cough, nothing that I would have paid attention to at the time. We were all coughing back in those days, with the acrid smoke from burning cities blanketing us day and night, and what few respirators we had being set aside for the Scavengers.
We all coughed back then. And when my cough moved into my lungs, taking up residence with nothing but a tickle to announce itself, I would have been hard-pressed to distinguish that from our new normal. Everyone had their own ways of coping in those days; I tried not to think about the damage being done to my body, mirroring the damage done to the planet in the decades prior. Keep looking forward, I told myself, focus on what you can control.
Maybe if I had paid a little more attention, I would have realized what was happening while there was still time to stop it. But I hadn’t, and one amber-bright September morning, when I opened my mouth to speak and instead fungal blooms spilled out like so much pastel vomit, I knew it was too late.
R. F. Daniels is a queer nonbinary writer of speculative fiction based in Helsinki and found online at rfdaniels.com.
Gone With the Window
GARETH D JONES
Through the window Calum could see the pleasant grass lawn studded with brilliant buttercups, the trickling stream that bordered the garden and beyond that the soft, rolling hills that stretched into the distance. It was a vista of pure joy and relaxation that he never grew tired of.
“You’re doing it again!” The shrill, whining voice interrupted Calum’s reverie. He blinked and looked away from the window, briefly, at his haggard looking wife. “Why can’t you pay me half the attention you pay that, that window?!”
Calum shrugged slightly and turned back to the window.
“It’s all we have left,” he murmured, “all there is of Earth.”
A thin screech was all the warning he got as his wife advanced with a heavy saucepan and swung it with all her strength. The pan collided against the window with a sharp crack and the view disappeared in a haze of static and a spider web of cracks. A quiet electrical fizz was all that broke the stunned silence.
“What have you done?” Calum looked aghast at his wife, who stood there panting, pan held limply in one hand. “Now there’s nothing left. It’s all gone.”
Outside, through several feet of solid rock, the toxic wind howled across the barren landscape, blasted rock showing no sign that life had ever had a hold there.
Gareth is unofficially the second most widely translated SF short story author in the world.
A Strange Day in Hell
ETHAN LUCE
The day I died and went to Hell, I was shocked. I wasn’t supposed to go here! I marched through the brimstone bogs and burning fields until I reached Lucifer himself. The Devil was a colossal snake with red eyes aglow.
“I can’t be in Hell, that makes no sense.”
“That’s what they all say,” He chuckled maliciously. “You know what you did.”
“No, not like- I mean it makes no sense because I’m Jewish.”
“Hmm… Are you sure you’re not just a wee bit Christian?”
“No. I’ve never even eaten pork.”
Lucifer paused.
“You know what, you’re right, it really doesn’t. We’ve never even gotten a Buddhist before. This is a first.”
And so Lucifer sent me on my way to my proper afterlife. He’s really a nice fellow once you get to know him. I don’t know why he gets such a bad rap.
Ethan Luce is an author. He has been published in Dear Human and Borderline Tales.
Fortio’s Folly
LISA TIMPF
Apprentice wizard Fortio pulled up a chair, grinning in anticipation. He set his pint of foaming beer on a coaster and covertly studied the humans at the table from under shaggy eyebrows.
Friday was games night at the Boar’s Head Pub. He’d been longing to join in for months now. He’d had to sneak away from his master, the great wizard Greybeard, to get here tonight. He hoped the jeans and sweater he’d liberated from a neighbor’s laundry line would conceal his identity. Better than wearing my robe and regalia, he told himself.
Fortio shook his head as he remembered the veiled warnings the wizards back at the School had given, about the dangers of mixing with humans. Overdone, like most of their warnings, he thought. How could these weak creatures harm him?
He took a long pull on his beer as he checked out the game box on the table. Pandemic. He’d never played before, but if humans could do it, surely he could manage.
On his first turn, he flipped a card over.
In a distant city, a child began to cough.
Lisa Timpf’s writing has appeared in Star*Line, Polar Borealis, Scifaikuest and other venues.
Sunrise Over Antarctica, Sept. 23, 2026
NICHOLAS DE MARINO
September sun ignites snow, blinding a thawed penguin in the polar dawn. It stumbles and flails atop blue-gray glacier. A quintet of explorers laugh. You've got to appreciate the little things, pratfalls included. The penguin rights itself and waddles through their wispy, spectral forms, plunging into six months of day.
Nicholas De Marino is a neurodivergent rhyparographer. More at nicholasdemarino.blogspot.com.
Bug
RICKEY RIVERS JR.
There’s something crawling around. It’s in the walls. I usually hear it at night time. It moves in a hurried pace. It’s looking for something, or maybe it’s running from something. I can’t even tell. It’s been like this for the past two weeks. It’s scurrying inside the walls. It’s shifting as I sleep, or try to sleep. It’s moving like an animal. I can’t even tell how large it is, because it changes in size. Sometimes it’s like a roach. Sometimes it’s like a squirrel. It doesn’t even make a noise otherwise. It’s nocturnal. In the day it seems to be away. I think I need to tape up my vents, and all the cracks in the walls. Now that I mention it, there’s a lot of cracks in the walls, and they’re different sizes too.
Rickey Rivers Jr was raised in Alabama. Tree House can be found on Amazon.
A Smooth Finish
ALETHEA PAUL
The last thing to divide was a bottle of Shiraz, a wedding gift meant to be shared on our twenty-fifth anniversary. Neither of us wanted the reminder. Nor to be wasteful. Two last things in common.
“Let’s share it, as we sign?”
You opened. I poured.
“Too dry.” Like our bedroom.
“Wasn’t sweet enough to age.” We hadn’t been kind.
“Not enough acidity.” We never fought to preserve our relationship’s thrill.
This marriage was never meant to last six years. Let alone twenty-five.
“At least it’s not bitter.”
We weren’t.
We knew not to linger; to enjoy a smooth finish.
Alethea pretends to be profound with purple prose, puns and alliteration.
Splurge
ADRIENNE REX
“Is it even worth it?” Dorothy stared ahead at the supermarket shelf, thinking hard.
The shelves here shuffled the stuff you were likely to buy right in front of your face according to the height on your biometric tag. She’d been about to grab her usual choice when this high end goodie was shoved in front of her nose instead.
Max leaned on the shopping cart, drumming her fingers along the handle. Advertisements scrolled in holograms under her hands. “I mean it’s not a necessity but—“
“So we shouldn’t get it.” Dorothy looked down at the price tag again. It flashed happily, not understanding she couldn’t afford what it offered.
Max sighed. “You know what? I’ll get some extra hours at work. Put it in the cart.”
Dorothy perked up. “Really?”
“Sure. It’s my apartment too.”
Dorothy mentally promised to cover takeout the next three times her and Max ordered in. She hefted the container into the cart, careful not to squish the grapes.
‘Quality air! Ultra filtered’, the label promised. The company said this stuff came from actual living trees, but Dorothy knew that was probably just a marketing gimmick.
“It’s nice to have a little luxury,” she sighed, and adjusted the straps on her respirator.
Adrienne Rex is a writer, a Texan, and a weirdo. Find her here: https://adrienne-rex-writes.carrd.co/