by Gabrielle Steele Alana stood one step shy of the quaint stone bridge, gripping her sword as she stared at the furry red leg that stuck out from beneath the frayed edge of the giant’s shirt. The battered clothing suffered an abundance of arrow holes, and its original owner had clearly met a rather gruesome end. A shiny black nose was poking through one hole mid-torso. “I say, giant, can you hear me all the way up there?” “We– I can hear you just fine.” The voice coming from the shadows of a heavy hood was far too high-pitched for a giant. How had the villagers fallen for it? It…

by Spencer Orey It was late when she buzzed into my office in the shrub. This time of the year, I expected grasshoppers, maybe someone left behind in a migration. No such luck today. She was a mantis, same species as me, the kind I’d run away from before the cockroach war changed everything. These days, I didn’t see much reason to run. Better to sit still and let her eat. “I heard you can find anyone,” she said. Disappointing. But at least a job would give me something to do. “Sure,” I said. “When’s the last you saw him?” “Her,” she said. “She vanished last night. After…” She ran…

by Steve Loiaconi Whenever there’s a crisis in Action Cove, the mayor calls in these jamokes. Sparky is a labradoodle who tools around in a modified fire truck. Siren, the German shepherd, drives an excessively armored police car. Then you got Splash, a collie with a hovercraft; Slate, a boxer in a bulldozer; and Sting, a chow chow in a little yellow helicopter. They take orders from Cash, an inexplicably wealthy 15-year-old with a good heart and a quaint notion of justice. I got to hand it to them. Most days, those pups do a decent job of keeping the peace. Saving cats in trees, stopping petty crimes, putting out…

by Jessica Cho When the doors of the Universities across the world first opened to them, the cats, for all their sheddings and shortcomings, took to those academic halls the same way they took to sunbeams and soft places. They paced through their research with a hunter’s single-minded focus, ears high and alert for any sounds of interest, ferreting out facts like mice from the walls. The linguistics department welcomed their nimble voices, well versed in a wide range of sounds, but even more their subtlety of jaw and gesture, their ability to communicate across oceans of silence. From laboratories and lecture halls, they pulled strings from theories, tangled and…

by Marshall L. Moseley “Mouse?” I gently reached out and tapped him with my paw, but my little gray friend lay inert. Still. We had been playing in the grass the way we always play. The game – you know it, I’m sure – was cat and mouse. Our respective species had once played it in deadly earnest, but over time, after the garden’s MedNanites gave us minds and we’d become friends, we played it for fun. I hadn’t shaken him that hard. I’d shaken him harder before, and he’d always lain still for a moment, and then bounded up with a cheery “Good one, Cat!” and we’d go on…

A. P. Golub Stjepan saved me when I was a kitten 56 years ago (his time, of course). My own time has been spent less… linearly. He recognizes me, I think, when I curl at his side on the hospital bed. He doesn’t say anything, but his hand scratches under my chin like he used to do. His hands are frail. Not like they used to be. I am thinner now, and my fur isn’t thick and soft like it once was. Soon, he will be gone, and I will go, too. But for now, I want to pretend that I am just a cat, and he is still a…

by Jelena Dunato Roza runs down the corridor towards the bursar’s office, unladylike, her freckled cheeks red with exertion, auburn ponytail trailing behind her. Leather soles of her new oxfords slip on the polished floor and she skids past the door, flailing, gripping the doorknob in the last moment. Locked. She checks the clock above the notice board. Two minutes past four. She sighs, ready to try again tomorrow, when a leaflet pinned to the board catches her eye. Secret Society of Shifters and Their Nefarious Protocols it proclaims in thick, greasy hectograph ink. “Roza!” Lena’s footsteps echo in the empty corridor behind her. “What are you doing? We’re all…

by Deborah L. Davitt The gibbet creaked under her weight as she shifted in place, coiling her tail up, out of reach of the crowd here in Port Royale — most of whom wanted bits of her fur as keep-sakes, it appeared. They’d probably fight over her earrings and jewelry when it came time for her corpse to be removed from her tiny prison. Not that they’d have a hope of making her earring’s luck work for them, of course. But that’s what she got for being famous — the Dread Pirate Grace Morraine, scourge of the skies. Her great flying ship, the Elektra, couldn’t save her now. She licked…

by CB Droege The plan was that we would drop onto the airstrip, clear the LZ of lizards, then the plane could land, and we’d off-load the heavy artillery. It didn’t quite go down like that, though. During the drop my chute got tangled, and I was steered off course, dropping me just off the beach outside the fence. I was sandy and dripping, much of my equipment waterlogged and useless, including my radio and gun, but I was the lucky one. After coming ashore, I watched the plane circle for another ten minutes, then it flew off north, back toward the mainland. It was clear that the rest of…