By Ramprasath Rengasamy

“Listen up!” Irant shouted. A collective silence fell as the villagers and their chief looked up at Irant. The massive banyan tree at the centre of the island

By Anthea Jones

AI Steve - English (Australian) hunkered down behind a compressed facade of archive files within the image library of "U DO U", a narrative-style

By James C. Clar

The four cavalry troopers waited in a cold, pressurised dome that served as a barracks on a remote corner of the system’s third planet. They were playing cards beneath

By Wes Parish

“It’s the fault of all these cross-time travellers, and trans-multiverse visitors,” the old Iranian said, spitting savagely at an ant making its way towards his

By David Dumouriez

In the old days (that is, in the time of the bitten fruit company), people had worn these things in order to track the duration and patterns of their sleep. Now Nexus

By William Kitcher

Davey didn’t even bother to say hello to us; he just started pounding on some guy sitting at the next table to us at Dragon’s Bar And No Food. A little unfair if you

By J.S. O'Keefe

The roses are browning at the edges. The stems must've been cut too long. They smell like the dark corner of the pantry. 

You wash your hands. Soap, rinse,

By Vin Berardi

It was closing time, and Monty sighed. 

He waved goodbye to the last customer of the night, then followed him to the door and locked up after he left. Monty

By Jon Adcock

There are places where the boundary between this world and the next has grown thin. At one such location, where the divide is as flimsy as gauze, there is a bar. It’s

By Thomas Koperwas

John stood up on the shattered ground of the battlefield and flipped open the visor of his body armour, exposing his intense blue eyes and red handlebar mustache to

By Matteo Romano

The officer arrived expecting the usual: a noise complaint, a neighbour dispute, maybe a confused elderly woman who’d locked herself out. He did not expect to spend the

By L Christopher Hennessy

The Spire was a vertical city — sixty floors of steel, neon, and blood. Each level was ruled by a different mob, cartel, or syndicate. The higher you lived,

By Steven French

“Cup of tea?”

“Sorry?”

“Tea. A nice cuppa. Freshly brewed. You seem a bit distracted, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Oh, yes, sorry. Tea. Yes

By Kevin J. Phyland

“When did all this happen?” Sonia took a hand from the steering wheel and waved vaguely at the tract houses we were driving past.

“Huh?” was my response,

By Stefan Vucak

One story my grandma liked to tell that always stuck with me was about a wandering old woman and a rich miser. A small detail here and there changed with the telling,

By Joseph Sullivan

I woke up to the easiest day of my life.

The alarm clock woke me up at 8 AM, the perfect time. I had fifteen minutes to adjust to being awake, which was the