2,982 stories · showing 50
"Do you remember that meme from way back when? Meme? Yeah, from the Age of Memes. Come on, you know the one. 2026 . . . Ah, I see where you’re going with this. In January they thought the Australian wildfires would be the biggest disaster of the year?...
Content note: mentions of suicide June finds the dragonfly the summer after Miko dies. Has died, June’s mother might say, shadow tremoring in the doorway to June’s room. Has been dead for months, Junebug. But not you. God, not you. But time for June has...
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
The Sigil of Assurance You take a bit of wax and drip it over the em dash fresh out of the printer, working it over, building it up until it’s a little caterpillar crawling on the page, nestled between two words, perhaps burrowing into one—I’m so...
Nobody dances the way he does, and he knows it, and everyone can tell. The beat is something ancient and otherworldly, or that’s what it feels like; it wakes something inside him, half-remembered, half-submerged like the marble arm of a maiden or a piece...
sexual-contentviolence
Ending 1 The world decays. It is your fault. Ending 2 The world decays. It is only somewhat your fault. Ending 3 Do I need to say it? Are you beginning to understand? Ending 4 Clearly not. Ending 5 You cannot save him. Every time you try it only...
deathself-harmviolence
Content note: suicidal ideation “Please—turn it off!” A pained, painful wail from the room across the hall; soundtrack laughter dissolving into guttural thunder as a film projector slowed to a stop. “Well damn,” said the stranger who was entering the...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Feast #1 We stare at Judar of the Island, stunned, as he picks up a piece of roasted chicken and bites into the place where thigh meets leg, the marinade smearing the corners of his mouth. His teeth sink into the flesh again, then again, then again, until...
body-horrordeathviolence
For Seanan McGuire. And Coyote. Let me tell you about the year Coyote took the Devils to the State Championship. Coyote walked tall down the halls of West Centerville High and where he walked lunch money, copies of last semester’s math tests, and unlit...
sexual-content
Because it’s Carnaval, Iara wears a striped pirate shirt and a red pirate headband. And because of who she is, she sits on the bathroom floor, closes her eyes, and wears the perspectives of seven alley cats, three stray dogs, and a single pigeon for the...
sexual-content
Content note: suicidal ideation I am a star, falling. “Awake now?” My eyes open to words as an unknown face greets me, small with a curious gaze. She parts full lips to bare teeth and I tense. A threat? No. A smile. I stare back. “I didn’t think you’d...
slaverysuicidewar
Kate was cursed by her cousin on his deathbed to never stay. She and her cousin Bo didn’t hate each other—far from it. They’d grown up together: same small farming town in the inland northwest, population 394. So small that when Bo finished high school, he...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
1. A photograph in black and white, taken with a Zenit vintage Soviet camera. Taken outside what would much later become Tong Yun City, in the days when it was still just a cobbled-together mass of crash-landed jalopies, connected with primitive tubing...
death-of-a-loved-one
After the braiding, a low buzzing remains in Memoire’s ear. It reminds her of the low buzzing she heard while they shampooed her hair. They told her she could never submerge her head in water after the braiding. No more swimming. No more drifting on her...
body-horror
Before the world ends, Miri’s family saves up enough money to escape to 2004. 2004: a safe haven. The year lilts off the tongue, like a promise. Miri and Lise spend their last evening together in their favorite spot, sitting on the top of the holotower at...
Well, Officer, the trouble really start when Mr. Vincent dead. I shouldn’t have been surprise eh. My neighbour wasn’t studying he health at all. He was young still, in he sixties, so he spend a lot of time by the bar down by the football field drinking and...
“Always just. Always magical.” When the four of us first started working as Magical Girls, we penned the slogan in a McDonalds, giggling about how corny it sounded. Annie joked about how we’d still be calling ourselves magical girls when we were eighty,...
deathgoreviolence
LA NDRY or L UNDRY. Those were the two choices. You never knew which one you were gonna get. The letters took turns to be fickle, blinking and spluttering in a game of chance. Mr. Lee, the laundry-mat owner, was stingy with the upkeep. He let his...
The wall of the city is made of glass, smooth and clear, slippery and strong. The stranger and his dog wear a path outside it every day, watching, listening, waiting to be ready. The wall is about three times the stranger’s height, perhaps a bit taller. As...
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Out in the great expanse of cosmos, little seeds float. They have been drifting for billions of years in the cold darkness of space from one planet to the other, driven by the need for survival and propagation, but most of all driven by spite (they will...
body-horrorgoreviolence
Unknown Compartment There is no door where there should be a door—no hall where there should be a hall. The house has reconfigured itself, again, and I find myself before […]
body-horrordeathviolence
"They are travelling in the great dark before them nothing behind them stars just the two of them the man that captains and the ship that sails darts flies through space —whoever said space is empty did not know what they were talking about space is full...
body-horrorsexual-content
"Sing. Sing the world into being. The world’s misty valleys and sunlit hills are described by the song of all things. So is the work of skilled hands and the begrudging march of soldiers’ boots. Every action, every object, in the past and the present and...
violence
"Peter and Isaac were the last remaining of their small, close-knit group. Isaac had been sick for several months, and Peter missed their weekly lunch get-togethers at the Café Sosie. His wife used to warn him he needed new friends. “Those old men are...
Cannon-D’s body was spun from a 3D printer. It compiled fiber by artificial fiber, a loving replica of the protein strands and carbons that would have made up the real, […]
This episode features "A Vintage Kind of Death" written by Alex T. Singer. Published in the October 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/singer_10_26...
At the end of this sentence, close your eyes and briefly imagine Earth’s fiercest predator. Go on, I’ll wait. What animal did you think of? (Let’s pretend the title didn’t […]
Wine breathes, down here in the dark. It breathes, it ages. It is a living thing, the same as us. Inside each bottle is an ecosystem: a dark sea that […]
1 Bakili awakes before the sky outside the window has shown the early fish-belly white of dawn. He stealthily gets out of bed, alighting on tiptoe, kisses his sleeping wife’s […]
Do you remember how it started? A bright light in the sky, a brave new moon growing bigger and bigger. We called it Little Prince because we were romantic and […]
All the world was blue. Above, below, surrounding, within. The blue of the sky when Bethony broke the surface of an endless ocean to breathe in sweet, oxygen-rich, unpolluted air. […]
Morag took a firm grip on the end of her walking stick, looked down at her robot Seamus. “Here goes,” she said to the robot. “You go in first, with […]
“It’s not the same room,” Chiyo says staunchly. She’s sitting in her wheelchair, a faded quilt tucked around her legs. A Western plays on the TV, cowboys with scruffy chins […]
This episode features "Skin and Glass" written by R. P. Sand. Published in the September 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/sand_09_26 Support us on...
This episode features "Country Music" written by Madeleine Vigneron. Published in the September 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/vigneron_09_26...
This episode features "Fistful of Antimatter" written by Rich Larson. Published in the September 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/larson_09_26...
This episode features "And So I Open My Fists" written by Rachel Sobel. Published in the September 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/sobel_09_26...
sexual-content
This episode features "To Walk This Distant Shore with You" written by A.D. Sui. Published in the September 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
This episode features "When Humans Are No Longer Born Human" written by Zhu Yixuan. Published in the September 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
It was all the gossip in the marshlands when the youngest wife of the Hisanha chain brought home a young man from upriver. The young man, whose name was Aigistha, […]
sexual-content
If you drive far enough into the farmland around Kindersley, Saskatchewan, there’s only one channel on the radio. It’s a country music channel, of course. When I started to work […]
death-of-a-loved-one
Qopa was once a world of marshes. Visitors hear this often, in tones that range from apologetic to bitter, wistful to matter-of-fact—especially when they are shown the vast clay pan […]
goreviolencewar
I made eye contact today. I knew my life leaked, droplets of soul seeping from my pores, and I did not care. For those eyes were a pale sage glass, […]
death-of-a-loved-onepregnancy-loss
This episode features "The Universal Human Happiness Program" written by Y.M. Pang. Published in the August 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
mental-illnesssuicide
We’re ten and watching what must be the last physical television in what must be the last laundromat in the world. Your mom is on her third load, jeans this […]
Three aliens float across from Tabitha, their bodies undulating softly, wetly, like enormous raindrops filled with chrysanthemums. Petallike structures push against their transparent membranes, forming rounded shapes within, which curl […]
body-horror
This episode features "Water-Eaters" written by Beth Goder. Published in the September 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/goder_09_26 Support us on...
body-horror
01 The first time I saw her, she was trying to prove to a water dispenser that she was human. The dispenser wouldn’t give her any water because she still […]
This episode features "When You Give a Dokkaebi Taco Tuesday" written by H.H. Pak. Published in the August 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
abuseviolencewar
This episode features "Feed Them on Your Dreams" written by E.N. Auslender. Published in the August 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/auslender_08_26...
abuseslavery