Category: Fantasy

All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

The Dog Who Could Draw by Stephen J Kimber

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The dog never speaks without a pencil in his paw. On good days he may draw for you a line, a rectangle, a box, a room that becomes; what do you want? Might it be a bodega in some Latin American country, a taverna, a shack where drinks and mescal are served, a room where women also give away their forgetfulness potions. He is never quite precise as to which, and the voice that accompanies the blossoming picture is merely shading pencil.

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Cursed Tree of Ingbian by Torsaa Emmanuel

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Once upon a time, there lived a community called Ingbian, meaning “Relatives.” The community was called so because they did things together in one accord. They were deeply rooted in their traditional beliefs and had not embraced the gospel early. They worshipped multiple gods, often visiting shrines and performing rituals. Many of the community members were so engrossed in their spiritual practices that they engaged in astral projection at night.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Is There Anybody There? By Michael Smith

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Acacia knew her calling from the age of ten. Noticing all her clothes were labeled ‘MEDIUM’ and, being a highly impressionable girl, she naturally assumed the universe, or possibly a parallel one, was offering a clear hint as to her correct career path.

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Moment by Evan Hale

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She sat up, prim and proper, as if in counterpoint to her casually draped robes and the haphazardly pillowed sedan chair. Like for her previous sittings, she was artfully arranged in Laurent’s beautiful courtyard, the scent of flowers filling her nose. Her lover looked up from his canvas to offer a conspiratorial wink, as her loosely wrapped coverings rippled in the breeze and brushed against her skin. The slight movement of the cloth kept the glow of their lovemaking fresh, and the faint curve of her lips betrayed imperfectly hidden delight.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Another Way to Do It by Stephen Silvester

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Punch – the professor only used the honorific Mr when trying to seize the butterfly attention of excited children – woke up one morning and decided enough was enough. From his random dangling position it so happened that he was looking at – it could hardly be into – one of the glazed eyes of his unlawfully wedded. He didn’t know whether she was awake or not; he was only ever fairly confident that she was when she was on the other end of the tug of war with the baby and had already assumed the professor’s rather camp baritone. Punch sniffed the air and wondered if being upside down was making his sense of smell more acute.

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All Stories, Fantasy

A Whale of a Time by Kelly Hossaini

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The parking lot was empty.  But that wasn’t unusual, partly because it was midnight and partly because, since the sparkling new Saver General came to town, Dan Burns’s General Merchandiser rarely had any customers anymore.  Dan learned with dread the coming of the Saver General and he knew that, slow or fast, the death of his store was probably imminent.  Before he had closed up earlier that evening, he stood looking out the front door onto the empty lot.  It was getting cold.  Winter was certainly coming and in a high desert climate it would be dry and cold for months.  Dan didn’t mind that too much.  In the not-so-distant past, the chill would keep the townspeople coming in for heaters, batteries, warm socks, and hatchets to break icy ponds so livestock could drink.  Now the cold seemed to make things more desolate and hopeless.  Dan turned from the front door and left out the back to his truck.  At least the truck was paid for.  That would help him survive a bit longer.  Probably.

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Fantasy, Short Fiction

Slow Walking Out of Babylon by Deborah Prum

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One day, I meet Beelzebub standing ahead of me in line at the To God Be the Glory Soup Kitchen. Bathed in the glare of the fluorescent lights that flicker above us, the man glistens. Shards of hard white light reflect off his glimmering jacket, obscuring my view.

But that one glimpse gives me the shivers.

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Bone Reader of Tucson by Dana Wall

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The bones spoke to Angelina the way other women heard gossip over garden fences. Snake vertebrae whispered of rain coming from the east. Coyote teeth predicted claim jumpers and cattle thieves. But it was the human bones that spoke loudest, and those she kept hidden beneath her floorboards, wrapped in red silk stolen from a dead Chinese merchant’s shop. Each bundle reminded her of her own lost child, the daughter whose bones she’d never found to read.

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