by Michael H. Payne Staring at the computer screen, I blink, but the picture there doesn’t change.  I give it a few more blinks just to be sure, then I shift my gaze over to Meredith, sitting on the edge of the bed and tying her shiny black shoes.  “Mare!  This doesn’t make any sense!” “It’s the internet,” she says, her nimble fingers not slowing in their lace knotting.  “It’s not supposed to make sense.”

by Avra Margariti There once was an evil witch— No, a ragdoll raven— No, a family of crows unlike any other. Yes. Better. This is, after all, a love story. * * * A figure perched on the Eye of the Needle, staring at the rosy sunset swirls across the sky. If only she could grasp the correct thread of storytelling, of memory. Down below, her sharp eyesight clearly made out the human settlement despite the sheer distance separating their realms. The thatched roofs of cottages and huts peeked out through the gossamer mist. Trees and grass, valleys and woods. Scythe-bearing workers bent over cornfields as they wrapped up the…

by Brent Baldwin An unnatural flash of lightning cast Baroch’s silhouette across the prairie dirt. He waited, power trembling within him until the disc of the sun touched the horizon. His power unfurled, racing over rows of green corn and taking the wind with it. The weight of his years bent his shoulders into a slump. Was a time he could have cast a dozen summoning spells and hoed a field after, but those were distant memories.

by Gretchen Tessmer The ground was frozen. Permafrost settled deep in its bones, where the veiny sinew of tundra grass roots pushed through frosted earth. And snow. Snow dusted the landscape from horizon to horizon. White flakes of snow fell from the sky and swirled in the air. There was nothing but snow. And a fox on his way home.

by Ian Madison Keller Fairies can kiss my white-tailed ass. I never liked fairytales, even before I found out that fairies were the ones responsible for my “condition.” As soon as I was old enough to talk, I peppered my parents with questions about why I couldn’t go play outside like the other children. At first my mom placated me with vague platitudes of “when you’re older” but eventually the truth came out. I’ve been cursed by a fairy. No really. There was even a video of the fateful event. My mom let me watch it after finally letting it slip one day. I think it was after watching one…

by Tim Susman The food smell led Shadow a way he hadn’t gone before, so he placed his paws carefully among the jagged pieces of brick and concrete. He stayed to the shadows where he could, letting the darkness hide his black-furred form, and he kept his ears perked high for any noises other than the skittering of little rodents and the buzzing of insects. An 80-pound German Shepherd could handle most things he encountered these days, but not all, and even if he won a fight, he might sustain an injury more serious than those mapped in scars around his body.

by Larry Hodges The T-Rex stared down at the duckbill he’d just killed. He was sorry for the harm he had caused it, but what choice did he have? He took the first chomp out of it — but it only made him more ravenous. Sometimes at night he’d stare up at the stars and wonder what monster had created this evil predator-eat-prey system. But it was eat or die.

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman You know you’re in trouble when you have dinos on your doorstep.  Not just because they’re extinct.  They’re also clawed, scary, and they make you regret messing with that time machine, because introducing anomalies in your own time stream never ends well. “Carson Wheeler?” said the feathered Deinonychous at my door.  Her voice was raspy and came out of her throat instead of her mouth. She wore what looked like a police uniform, though I didn’t know the language or writing on her badge.  She had a lot of teeth in a head shaped like a football with one end split open, with a feathered crest…

by Eliza Master Cepha’s mother Octavia was harvesting algae when she got caught in a net made by humans. It dragged the octopus upward and out of the ocean. Underneath, a school of smelt watched. The youngest fish, Osme broke away from her siblings and rushed to report the sad news. Cepha was heartbroken. She puffed out a cloud of black ink in sorrow. As news of Octavia’s death spread, many fish visited Cepha’s home as if it were a museum. Cepha showed them her mother’s office. The ceiling was made of pink coral and the walls were coated with yellow sea moss. Inside were piles of crystalline sand and…