Tag: Aliens

All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

The Promise by Russell Fee

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The lake breeze chilled the back of his neck as he bent over the boulder to inspect the patterns of lichen spreading on its surface like an ink spill. This was the one he was to find. As the receding waves sucked the water from the sand around it, the rock sputtered and gurgled as if it were alive, a nursing infant or a dying soul. He had trekked almost three miles from his cottage to reach this point on the beach, the farthest out on this side of the island. From here it was fifty miles to the mainland over the surface of an inland sea. He removed his clothes, tossing them into the water. He was to carry nothing. Standing nude, he waited, facing the dunes that rose to the stretch of trees above the beach.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Warmth by J.H. Siegal

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Asatta fussed over her warmth-membrane and scanned the flat horizon of the little planet, searching for a spark of orange light. Blue wisps of ice and dust curled about the skyline. Anjett was late returning. Soon she would have to enter the dwelling and close it off, leaving him to the intractable cold of the planet’s night.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

The Gift by Arthur Pitchenik

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One clear night, a freakish bolt of lightning felled a giant oak tree in a park, and a shapeless creature emerged from the smoking crater at its base. The creature flattened into a pool of “tar,” slithered under a boulder at the lake’s edge, and silently brooded there.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Brave (not nude or new) Newt World by Doug Hawley

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When an Antarctic scientist uncovered an alien space ship while digging for a latrine, he sent for the best crypto-biologists, archaeologists and astronomers to come to the Antarctic base.  After the local Antarctic scientists were assembled, they entered the ship which had unrecognizable instruments and made weird sounds like those of a Theremin.  They quickly discovered something encased in ice, which they hauled off to their camp.

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Short Fiction

Step 13 by Joe Jablonski

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Marku 3 was a planet with a sun in eternal eclipse.

I landed there just over a week ago, careful to make camp within a small clearing in a forest full of pale, leafless trees. It was midday. It was brisk. There was a calming eeriness about the way the dim orange sunlight painted everything in shadows.

On that first night a group of the planet’s natives came to the camps’ perimeter and watched me in wonder. They were primitive with skinny inverted legs, bulbous heads covered in wire-like hairs, and a single eye embedded within the center.

They communicated amongst themselves with clicking noises made by tapping two bone plates on the inside of their knees together.

One came as an emissary, approaching within feet of me. As it stepped within the harsh glow of a floodlight behind me it suddenly froze.

It’s single eye dilated. Every hair was out like spikes.

It started with a low rumble in its chest. A soft frequency vibrated inside me, growing stronger by the second.

It was warm.

It was mesmerizing.

A dopamine rush flooded my system. Nothing else existed but ecstasy.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Home Again by Keith LaFountaine

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1.

Alarms blare. It is the end. David knows it as much as he knows anything else. Below, glorious golden clouds meld in a blue atmosphere. So much like Earth. But his family won’t see the light of this star system for twelve years. They will grow old and die, and if he ever makes it back all that will be waiting is a grave. Assuming, of course, there is a planet to return to, and a way home.

The ship falls, and David with it. McLonsky’s blood bubbles and flutters around the cockpit in globules that have minds of their own.

This is it. The end. David closes his eyes, and he waits for his Maker’s embrace.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

A Probing Interview by John Willems

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 My wife went ahead to her parents’ house for Thanksgiving, so I had to catch up to her after work. It’s a four-hour drive, and after two hours driving up highway 35, I needed to get off the road for a burger and beer. As soon as I got out of the car, I was surrounded by this white light, which I initially thought was just a floodlight from the shopping center. Before I got to the door of the microbrewery, I felt myself dissolving into a thousand little bits, and in five seconds, I went from the parking lot of a pour house to some kind of oval room with bright, white metal walls. Then, an alien walked in through what could have been the orifice of a metallic uterus. When I say an alien, this guy could have been taken from the fake autopsy video Fox tried to sell us all in the 90s. As cliché as it may be, he was a grey stick figure with oval, black eyes. The first words out of my mouth were “Dude, you’re an alien!”

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All Stories, Science Fiction

A Dose of the Glitters by Cataldo Carroll

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‘Çoè-àòk!?’ blurted officer Gargles.

‘Çoè-àòk!?!?’ he repeated with a bemused look. ‘How the feck am I supposed to pronounce this? Christ but these alien names would wreck your head. Why can’t they just be John or Bob for feck’s sake!?’

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Fragments by Jennie Boyes

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We sometimes remember that other universe. It comes to us in dreams, intangible and unattainable, an echo that rebounds on the parts of us that grieve our old form. We were once a deity of the heavens, too ancient and vast to consider the lives of mortals. The cosmos was our domain. We walked between planets and hurled asteroids at moons. The feuds and petty wars with our god-kin could supernova a sun. How mighty we were, and how foolish in our arrogance.

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All Stories, Horror

Mercy by Heather Harrison

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Gerald glanced at the hitchhiker staring out the passenger side of his truck. “Did ya’ hear me, son?”

“What?”

“I said, if you’re looking for mercy out that window, you won’t find it there. This world ain’t for giving mercy and when it does, it comes with a price.”

Slouched against the worn leather seat, the hitchhiker pulled his gaze away from the barren landscape, eyes drawn to the anomaly marring the desert sky. He inhaled a sharp breath and slid further into his seat, hands grasping the dashboard.

“It’s getting bigger,” he mumbled.

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