Fantasy magazine

From Modern Mythcraft to Magical Surrealism

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Fiction

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)

Flash Fiction

A Brief Catalog of Humans, as Observed by the Cryptids of Encante

by Ruth Joffre

The Myopic Cryptozoologist – Everyone’s least favorite human, this persistent creature is a narrow-minded cousin of perhaps our favorite type of human—the cryptozoologist—and differs from that specimen in several key ways.

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)

Flash Fiction

Monsters

by L.D. Colter

October 8th – I found more skin this morning. Pale flakes polka-dotting my blue sheets, grouped there as if they had conspired to jump together. Little sailors abandoning ship to take their chances in the expanse of my bed. I look my normal self in the mirror and find no red patches on my torso or legs. My back, maybe? It’s been itchy.

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)

Flash Fiction

Sturgeon Moon Jam

by Jennifer Hudak

Once a year, during the Sturgeon Moon, a house appears off Seven Mile Line Road in the heart of Chickasee County. Native grasses surround it, thick and tall, protecting the house and its sprawling kitchen garden from view. The being who lives inside the house calls herself Helga Tillinger when she manifests here.

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)

Flash Fiction

The End of a Painted World

by Sam Kyung Yoo

Flaming orange tongues devour the walls around us. The soldiers outside batter at the old wooden doors of the back entrance. Gingko holds fast, the ornate mural of gingko tree branches and golden leaves glowing like painted sunshine.

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)

Flash Fiction

Plum Century

by Simo Srinivas

It takes the lieutenant one hundred years to climb the hill to Lao Po’s house. By then, the warlords have come and gone, the Republic has risen and fallen, and developers have been petitioning the ruling party to demolish Lao Po’s hilltop hut for decades.

In Nov. 2022 (Issue 85)