Fantasy magazine

From Modern Mythcraft to Magical Surrealism

Dystopia-Triptych-Banner-2023

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Short Stories

Fiction

The Will of the God of Music

by P.H. Low

Author spotlight

You hear the door open as if in dreaming. Back when you were a conservatory student, you chewed a third of a melatonin tablet every night—to keep yourself from snapping awake before sunup, chest tight, your head still achy with exhaustion. Now, mornings are difficult: your eyelids weighted, sliding; thick grey wool between your temples. Your body drifting in a warm, slow sea.

In Mar. 2023 (Issue 89)

Fiction

A Princess With a Nose Three Ells Long

by Malda Marlys

Author spotlight

In a castle flanked by fjords, so very far from everything that the winds rarely raised its banners, there lived a troll princess. Her mother was a troll queen, by virtue of a castle and a bad temper, but queen she was, and her ambitions did not end at the still shores.

In Feb. 2023 (Issue 88)

Fiction

The Dead Return in Strange Shapes

by Lowry Poletti

Author spotlight

The dead return in strange shapes, yoked to those who mastered them in life. Thais sees them: shadowy animals who slink between the townspeople in the market square. When he was born, so he is told, his mother held up his birth-wet body and pressed her nose to the middle of his brow. They lay together, crowned by oak branches dragged low to the ground by last night’s rain, on the stone table at the center of the woods.

In Feb. 2023 (Issue 88)

Fiction

Skyscrapers That Twist to the Sun

by Erin Brown

Author spotlight

Shaundra took the small, empty cardboard box and swiveled on her work stool to place it gently on top of her daughter Dineisha’s head. Her daughter went cross-eyed trying to look at it and started chewing on the corner of her thumb, smiling at the game.

In Jan. 2023 (Issue 87)

Fiction

Broodmare

by Flossie Arend

Author spotlight

I’m happy on the road. The land stretches like a languid animal, and I find tranquility in its measured length. Outside the car the earth breathes, the ground rising and sinking. Even though I am the one driving, concentrating on the road and the trucks roaring past, it’s like a meditation for me—my mind empties into the open space.

In Jan. 2023 (Issue 87)

Fiction

Into the Dark

by Jennifer R. Donohue

Angie is three months dead before I get her letter. She sent it the week before she died, and I guess that figures; the postal service got fucked in the twenties and never recovered. Maybe she even relied on that delay.

In Dec. 2022 (Issue 86)

Fiction

Parebul of the Mother, Asked in Moonlight

by Victor Forna

Walking, crossing, moon-kissed streets, black top, blue jeans, unwashed. Her afro is home to a million brown-winged birds, everlastingly chirping. There’s a baby boy, eight months old, asleep in her arms, and maybe he dreams of beautiful spinning star-like things because he doesn’t know of the hurt in the heart that loves him.

In Dec. 2022 (Issue 86)

Fiction

SOC 301: Apian Gender Studies (Cross-Listed with ZOL 301)

by Aimee Ogden

The bee liberation group meets at seven o’clock every other Thursday in the group study rooms on the fourth floor of the Main Library. Hannah tears tabs from the flyers that they post all over campus—outside the big auditoriums in Wells Hall, on the doors of the dorm cafeterias, in the women’s bathrooms—and feeds them into her jacket pocket. When she forgets and puts the laden jacket through the laundry, they turn into so much confetti.

In Nov. 2022 (Issue 85)

Fiction

The Typewriter

by Z.K. Abraham

Author spotlight

The sun draped itself over the left armrest of the couch at dawn, while Zella sat waiting for the typewriter’s tapping to commence next door. Even though she’d tossed and turned all night in the summer heat, she still found herself rising early, expectant.

In Nov. 2022 (Issue 85)

Fiction

The Black and White

by Aigner Loren Wilson

Author spotlight

She wasn’t at his funeral, so I took the van around to where I knew she was staying while she was in town. He always taught us to stick close to our home. It was her ex’s place, a rundown one-story with dead grass and an old plastic playground for some forgotten children.

In October 2022 (Issue 84)