Our latest story
The Yarnball Woman - Michael Milne
By the third time Patricia lost a finger, everyone knew better than to raise a fuss.
Her family hadn’t always been this calm. When the first finger, a knuckle’s-worth of her left pinky, had fallen plumply into her dinner salad, there had been an enormous commotion. Her young daughters screamed and bolted into the back yard, and hours later had to be coaxed back inside. Jack fumbled with the phone in the kitchen, trying to maintain an even voice while holding back tears. The family border collie, Bernard, stationed himself next to Patricia, barking at the table and the fallen digit. All the while, Patricia sat staring at her dinner and her finger, unable to move, as though crying or sealing herself in the bathroom would invite some new calamity, allow new seams to loosen and more body parts to shake free.
This finger disassembled like the others, severing just below the nailbed. June, the elder daughter, hadn’t noticed anything, but Leila was looking and let out a calm, plaintive sigh, like the sound of a pillow being fluffed. Whatever form her exclamation had wanted to take, Leila snuffed it and formed it into something tamer. The girls don’t want to embarrass me, Patricia thought. She dreaded that they were already burying their own feelings on her behalf.
She had just painted her nails in aquamarine, and the tiny nub lay lifeless on the hardwood like a dead scarab. There was no blood and no wound, just a smooth, curved tip. Like it hadn’t come from Patricia at all.
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The Yarnball Woman – Michael Milne
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Beautifully written speculative fiction
That's what we offer. Speculative fiction in the tradition of Patricia McKillip, George R. R. Martin, Ursula Le Guin, and many others - well written stories with humor, emotion, and wit. Thanks for coming by. Bookmark us, tweet us, like us, even submit art or stories to us, if you're the creative type. We look forward to seeing it all.
It came from Beston Barnett
A question for Kai Hudson
Q: Are titles easy or hard for you? Do you start with the title or the story?
A: Titles are pretty easy, mostly because I try to stay short and sweet. So long as it expresses the theme of my story, I’m good with it. I usually write the piece before I generate the title, but on at least one occasion I’ve written and planned an entire novel based on a title that came to me out of the blue one day. My muse works in mysterious ways.
Kai Hudson’s story “Combustion” will be
published on Friday, 28 September 2018.
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October 2018
Table of Contents
- Reproduction in a Closed Loop — Andrew M LeBlanc
- Nana Naoko’s Garden — Michael Gardner
- Twins — Gregory Kane
- The Astronaut Tier — Jonathan Laidlow
Cover art by Oana Popescu.
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About Andrew M LeBlanc
Andrew LeBlanc is a writer, stay-at-home dad, and programmer. He lives in New York City where he manages a rooftop garden and searches for strange new foods to eat.
www.andrewmleblanc.com @RobotLeBlanc
Andrew M LeBlanc’s story “Reproduction in a Closed Loop” will be
published on Friday, 5 October 2018.
Subscribe to our e-mail updates so you’ll know when new stories go live.
The Yarnball Woman – Michael Milne
About Oana Popescu
Oana Popescu lives in Bucharest, Romania and works as a freelance illustrator specializing in the fashion, beauty and lifestyle genres. With a creative drive she was drawing, and painting starting from at an early age, developing an interest in fine arts.
Oana Popescu‘s image “Swing” is the cover art for our October 2018 stories.