When I was a child, I stepped into Færie. My life fit like hand-me-down clothes, so I wanted to find another.
The færies served a feast of skewered hearts. The flesh was soft; it spread warmth through my chest.
When I came home, it was all I wanted to taste.
Ellen Taylor is an academic in Nottingham, England. She writes short fiction to procrastinate from editing her novel.
Home is in a one-use cooler that costs as much as a used Honda Civic. Right now, it’s on a chartered helicopter and, honestly, there’s no way I can ground that figure for you—unless you’re the kinda scumbag who cuts in line for a heart transplant in the first place.
Nicholas De Marino’s Lamprocapnos spectabilis has retreated into the shade.
It was just out of reach. Just millimetres from the tips of my fingers, but in these gloves that just was too much. No act of will could change that; but that didn’t stop me struggling. I needed a helping hand from someone the other side. But they weren’t coming.
Oscar Clark is a video games veteran who wrote the game design/business books Games as a Service and Playing with Balance, published by CRC Press. He also runs a sci-fi improv dilemma actual play Anything Could Happen Show, which is part of the Fable & Folly Network.
A man walks along a seafront in February. Ice coats the rocks. The waves strike the concrete walkway and break into cold spray. He pulls his coat tighter. The houses look unoccupied. A woman approaches. She pulls her woolly scarf tighter. They pass. She doesn’t turn to look at him.
Ralph Goldswain lives in London. He writes fiction, non fiction, history, and has been widely published in the UK, America and South Africa. He’s now settled on writing microfiction, his greatest writing challenge.
Henry won’t stay in the vault, no matter what Arthur does. He tries to bribe Henry with poems of praise, flowers, a candlelight vigil on his marble mantle. But Henry wants more.
“I’ll keep you warm,” Henry vows, and so Arthur nestles alongside him in the vault.
Sleep comes easy.
Jillian Bost has had several short speculative stories published online and in anthologies. She is an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association.
His ashes sit in a box atop the shelf. They are nestled between my favorite books and a bud vase holding a wooden tulip. Sometimes I take the box down. I wish, yet again, that I had instructions. But I don’t, and so the box goes back on the shelf.
Carolyn is based in Seattle, WA. She writes stories both on and off the clock.
After the sermon, the preacher slipped into a back pew and filled his Bible’s margins with notes from another man’s message.
Down the hall, a student raised his hand.
The teacher never looked up.
One left church with fuller pages.
The other left with empty margins.
My mother died while still carrying me in her womb–
I was born all of twenty-six.
if mythology is any indication, only monsters grow up overnight.
And so I was for a while–
an oft-shapeshifting, teary-eyed, fire-breathing dragon.
While all births are painful,
not all of them bring forth joy.
Vishaal writes short stories and poems, mostly about memories. Some of his work has appeared or is forthcoming in ARTS by the People, Five on the Fifth, Ghudsavar, Kitaab, Hakara, Panorama, The Perch Journal, The Kelp Journal, Vermilion, The Rush, Open Minds Quarterly, The Rainbow Poems, Antonym Mag, Good Printed Things and Metonym Journal. One of his poems was recently nominated for the Best of the Net 2026 Anthology.
With surprising elegance, it slid down the ladder, escaping the suffocating dryness of the command deck. Eight arms deftly unlatched the airlock. Bubbles rose. HSSSS. The grate cracked open. A body slunk into the blue ink depths of the ocean, leaving the spaceship’s control room empty. Just for an hour.
Zoë Davis is a writer from Sheffield, England. She’s a stubborn FND sufferer and fights what her body says she can’t do by playing wheelchair rugby league. She writes poetry and prose, and especially enjoys exploring the interaction between the fantastical and the mundane, with a deeply personal edge to her work. You can find her words in publications such as: Ink Sweat & Tears, Strix, Roi Fainéant and Red Ogre Review. You can also follow her on X @MeanerHarker where she’s always happy to have a virtual coffee and a chat.
In the ninth year of our marriage, my wife said, “How can I miss you if you don’t go away?” Really. Several times she offered this encouragement, calmly and in all sincerity.
Then I did go for a weekend. She missed me, but I found I did not miss her.
Lynn Kozlowski has appeared in The Citron Review, The Zodiac Review, Molecule, 50-Word Stories, Bright Flash Literary Review, Every Day Fiction, The Dribble Drabble Review, Friday Flash Fiction, and The Malahat Review. He has a volume of short pieces, Historical Markers.