“Rope” by Michael Kelly – 3.0
Bourbon Penn #38, April 2026 On a gray, electric December beach, the narrator — a quietly isolated, self-described loner who visits the shore to manage dark moods — encounters a…
“Atomic Chess” by Josh Pearce – 2.6
Bourbon Penn #38, April 2026 Set during the Cold War, “Atomic Chess” weaves together two parallel narratives — one aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine, the other in a Havana café…
“Rocky Mountain Gothic” by Ev Datsyk – 2.8
Augur Literary Society, #8.3 November 2025 In an unnamed mountain town bordered by dense forest, a class of second graders is supernaturally summoned into the woods during recess. The forest…
“Ascension” by P.L. McMillan – 2.3
Apex, February 2026 Sam is a competitive climber who lost their left arm in a factory accident — distracted by a voice note from their partner Abithe while initiating a…
“This Obituary Has Been Redacted” by P.C. Verrone – 2.8
Strange Horizons, March 2026 Told entirely through the pages of a fictional gay magazine called Ganymede’s Men, P.C. Verrone’s story unfolds across a series of obituaries, letters to the editor,…
“What We Mean When We Talk About the Hole in the Bathroom” by Angela Liu – 4.0
Uncanny, March/April 2026 A woman and her husband discover a two-foot circular hole in their bathroom wall, emanating cold wind that smells of wet soil and river water. Their argument…
“Welcome to Heroism” by John Wiswell – 2.7
Uncanny, March/April 2026 In a near-future world where superhumans exist alongside ordinary people, a viral app called The Dare quietly rewires the relationship between spectacle, power, and collective action. Every…
“Those Who Left History” by Wanxiang Fengnian, trans. Stella Jiayue Zhu – 2.6
Clarkesworld, March 2026 “Those Who Left History” is a multi-voiced speculative fiction told through interleaved diary entries, journalistic reportage, and future historiography. Its central conceit is “spatial closure” technology —…
“First Human Ghost on Mars” by R.L. Meza – 2.6
Clarkesworld, March 2026 The narrator is the ghost of an astronaut — later revealed to be Captain Rogers — who died of a stroke before the Mars mission launched but…
“Dream Destinations (From the Lost Traveler’s Tour Guide)” by Alexander Weinstein – 2.9
Lightspeed, February 2026 “Dream Destinations” is a work of speculative fiction framed as a travel guide to impossible, surreal locations on a mysterious eighth continent that has suddenly appeared on…