There. On the yellow-grey horizon, the first sign of movement in months. She glides through the murky water without a ripple, closing on her prey: a smooth two-legged hatchling, collapsed near the river.
Its sustenance is meager, but enough to help her forget how close she’d come to the abyss.
I.R. Sullen is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest.
Sitting within the home at night by lamplight, what comparisons did the German people draw? What murmurs from the radio cut through into the room?
Did someone speak the fear aloud: are we like them, is this like now? Did someone else say: No, we live within a different time.
Nina Feinberg is a writer, photographer and distance runner. She lives in Brooklyn, NY and works in user experience design.
Joe Smith sizes up the pizza delivery guy through the peephole: manicured mustache, uniform too tight, possible U.S. Marshal. He slides twenty-five bucks through the mail slot.
“Keep the change.”
“Thanks. You gonna open the door?”
“Set the pie on the porch.”
“There’s ants.”
“A little extra protein won’t hurt.”
Hawkelson Rainier dabbles in prose and poetry. His novel, The Lake Erie Lights, is available online.
You noticed me?
Some notice their noon-dark shadows don’t move quite right. Others, when they stare into the gloom, see eyes looking back. I’ve been called a house settling, while others swear I live in darkness just beneath the bed.
But you’ve seen me outright.
We’ll have to fix that.
Solomon Knight is an avid reader and writer based out of Louisiana. He has been published by Silent Spark Press. Most days, he can be found daydreaming about grand adventures.
He saw the other man across the ridge.
Broad-faced. Heavy-browed. Uncanny curiosity in his eyes.
They watched each other without language.
He felt warning rise in his chest.
The other lowered his spear first.
The world held two kinds of man. Both fearful and weary.
Neither certain who would endure.
Bobby Battle Jr. is a speculative fiction author, who enjoys telling stories big or small. Thank you for your consideration.
The sea sings of shores distant, of treasures old and lands new. I wonder where you are, when you’ll return. You, who heard not my pleading o’er the ocean’s siren song.
May God preserve you from storms and selkies, pirates and perils, and may He return you safe to me.
Lynn Messing is a landlubber who loves every second of her near-annual visits to the shore and who wishes she could spend more time there.
My astrologer said I’d die by freezing.
You may laugh; I believed it.
So I moved – Jamaica, Barbados, now Bermuda.
Life’s pretty good – beaches, palms, a job in Tony’s Kitchen.
You know, that seafood place with the harbour view?
Where the freezer doors keep jamming…?
Maybe time to move again.
William Mitchell lives in East Sussex in the South of England. He is an award-winning author, having had early success with various Horror and Science Fiction publications before winning the Writers of the Future contest in 2012. His first novel, CREATIONS, came out in 2014 with John Hunt Publishing.
It’s back. A slight ache behind one eye, the left one. It always spasms exactly eight times then settles into a dull pain.
A splinter, nothing more.
I felt it before the drought.
Before the “election.”
Before the occupation.
It’s back again.
What happens next?
It’s never nothing.
Adrian L. Cook is glad to have 2025 in the rearview and is creeping stealthily into 2026 hoping this year leaves him (and his cherished people) well enough alone.
He cries the whole way, wriggling against the straps of his car seat. I hold my breath. Steam rises as cold air hits warm water. Bare feet slap against wet concrete. He dips one tentative toe, then a whole foot. All the way under now, laughing and splashing. I exhale.
Rachel M. Hollis lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, child, and a deeply unmotivated dog. Her work appears or is forthcoming in River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, Midway Journal, Lost Balloon, Gone Lawn, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere.
My cellphone buzzed unnaturally loud in the quiet cabin, making several boys stir. Grasping blindly, I muted it and held my breath until the room slowly returned to silence.
The next three hours crawled until reveille, when I could finally return my mother’s call and confirm my father had died.
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald has written for decades. He finds some stories easier than others.