I. On the tarpaulin I lay your body, cold and rigid as the geometry you love. Tiny invaders already hunger, stretching their wings and cilia in prayer. The banana-yellow mud tastes of forever, and when I sink to my knees the puddles run clear with eggs of sated flies. In worship they will subsume your … Continue reading Outfield by Hal Y. Zhang
One mistake is what separated Nellie from the others—the “fakies” as she called them. Nellie was no Miss Francine, and she certainly wasn’t a part of the, even worse, Psychic Sisters Network. She told her eight-year-old grandson, Sam, to mute the television every time one of the Psychic Sisters’ cheap ads came blaring from the … Continue reading Those Fantastic Lives by Bradley Sides
Before I died, I grew tall. After I died, I grew long. I stood up. In the furrows of the field I stood up. Thunderclouds were rolling in, bringing with them autumn rain, warm and cold at once. The red Ohio clay cut the soles of my bare feet. I dropped the spade by the … Continue reading Fallow by Erin K.Wagner
A maid’s face lies stark in the glass. She bares her teeth, her smile black as rot and dripping. The mistress has dentifrice of pale powdered coral flavoured with lilacs (she knows because she tested the granules with her tongue, once), but a maid must make do with soot. It’s both grainy and slick on … Continue reading Maid-of-Many-Skins by G.V. Anderson
Programming online. Log 3251CE.432CD Hello, world. Today I was told that the log debug message that my programmers use to ensure my record-keeping functions are online and working is part of a joke that the ancient computer builders would tell each other. I asked to know more about this joke, but Philemon and Bao-Shin got … Continue reading Objective: Understanding by Alyssa N. Vaughn
It’s the first time Camille sees his bone collection. She prowls the edge of Simon’s bookcase, brushing her fingers along the specimens on the shelves. The softly lit bones remind her of seashells, smooth and white, silky under her touch. Small animal skulls with teeth sharp enough to pierce skin; a larger one with twisting … Continue reading The Bones And Their Girl by Sylvia Heike
I’m swimming through the void, a great winged whale fortified against the cosmic deep, when the message comes, relayed from an orbiter I long thought defunct. I pause a parsec, unsure whether or not I should interpret it. Stars pass me by like raindrops on a car window; a metaphor that feels so alien now, … Continue reading Goldengrove Unleaving by Dafydd McKimm
Some Stuff This story is probably about you. It’s not the one where I’m the girlfriend. It’s the one where I wish I were the girlfriend. I lived beneath street level, windows with prison bars. I was like a stale sandwich wrapped in a bandana. I was carrying a too-heavy load of Biblical knowledge. I … Continue reading He Thinks He Knows Me by Rich Ives
I am running. Get ready. This is where the timeline splits. My hair beats about my face and the moon shines down and if this were a movie, there would be the silhouette of a wolf, howling at the moon. Instead, there are only coyotes, slunk low to the ground. In some of these stories, … Continue reading Timelines by L’Erin Ogle
Ani King is the Editor in Chief and founder of Syntax & Salt Magazine. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Strange Horizons, Penny Magazine, and Every Day Fiction. You can find her at thebittenlip.com and on Twitter. I Give it Six Months originally appeared in Jersey Devil Press, May 2016. Thing is, you … Continue reading I Give it Six Months by Ani King