by Julian Miles | Jun 7, 2026 | Story
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The alarm goes off again. Helen rolls over and swats at it, scoring a hit that sends it backwards off the bedside cupboard, still beeping until it hits the floor with an ominous cracking sound.
She sits up. That phone’s not even a month old! The sales blurb raved about it being satellite-linked and pretty much everything-proof!
Too quiet? She pops her open earbuds out. There should be street noises. The market shop across the road is always busy first thing.
She looks back and forth: the shadows her phone vanished into or the window? Consider the balance: positive curiosity – look outside. Negative curiosity – see if her phone is broken.
It’s early. Positivity is a must. She rolls over, gets her knees under her, and opens the window.
Damp!
The smell that comes in on the breeze reeks. The sounds coming with it are distant sirens and a passing helicopter. Still no traffic? She leans out and looks down.
Water!
She looks both ways. Three storeys below, her road has become a lake. Darker shapes are the undisturbed forms of cars, still sat at the kerbs. The market shop isn’t open because water’s lapping against the signage above it!
What about people who sleep at street level, or in basement flats?
There are other things in the water. Rubbish, clothing, magazines. Down by the corner she can see what might be a body. Which answers her question in the worst way.
How’s she going to get to work? No. The factory is a bus ride away, and downhill. Water always levels itself. Work is deeper under than the market shop.
Phone!
She dives back and gropes behind the cupboard. Her hand hits something furry and warm! It makes a noise and is gone from her grip. She recoils, then resumes. Rats. Have to go somewhere, and if getting out isn’t an option, up is all that remains.
Grabbing her phone, she checks it. Not a mark on it? She starts the torch app and looks behind the cupboard. One startled-looking rat that scurries off, and her mum’s trinket box with its lid in two pieces.
Swiping the torch away, she brings up the newsfeeds after flicking through the morning ad stack and paying her daily tariff.
The headlines are about how the New Thames Barrier was made irrelevant when the tide bypassed it, inundating the land for kilometres on either side. Scrolling down, she finds secondary headlines about coastal towns on both sides of the channel being flooded by a spring tide augmented with polar meltwater. Apparently the ‘silent flood’ occurred when the tide came in as normal, but simply kept coming. Some low-lying areas are under six metres of water! Reading further, she sees speculation that entire communities have been lost. She snarls. Somebody knew this was coming. Without solutions, they decided not to publicise it.
Going to local news, she finds the few available sites have last posts made yesterday evening. Switching to social media outlets, some are still accessible. Reading through, she slumps back onto the bed.
Local emergency response was flooded out. Those answering initial call outs are suspected lost or driven inland. Anything relying on local installations or power is down. National emergency response is prioritising cities and strategic sites. Predictions are assistance may not arrive for weeks, maybe even months. Current recommendations are for people to head inland – without saying how.
Many have already grasped the bottom line: there’s no help coming. Her home town has been claimed by the sea, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
by submission | Jun 7, 2026 | Story |
Author: GJ Welsh
Sarah was like all the other estate agents, as was her fate.
“Pristine, you can see she has had a bit of work done. But she has solid bones and great resale value.”
Every house they saw came with a matching real estate agent, in matching skirting and branded vehicle, their airbrushed smiles beaming from magnetic signs on the doors of outdated luxury sedans.
Gail was a fix-er-upper. She told us about her failed marriage. And the fact that she had to ‘downscale’ herself. But she still had her ‘gals’ and ‘wine night’. She just needed a polish, and she would be up on the market again herself.
Penelope was falling apart. The more you looked around, the more problems you found. Five rundown bedrooms, one for every ex-husband, and a kitchen that hadn’t had its stove cleaned in years. But still, going for a bargain price.
They had met dozens like these ladies. Every house had a story, and every agent had a few more. They were a great team; he played the disinterested husband, while his wife always knew the right questions to ask. While he sneaks up behind them with the sedative.
Sarah took a little extra effort to take down. You see, Sarah had had it tough. She lost it all and then tried to inhale life back from a paper bag. She was used to solvents. She had fought off thugs under bridges and stabbed a guy behind a warehouse with a fork. She knew how to fight.
Sarah is doing better now, she is off the drugs, has a new boyfriend who is too into bats, and she is taking taekwondo down at the community centre.
“Are there good schools in the neighbourhood?”
Sarah was about to answer.
Sarah doesn’t go down like the others. She has a bit of tolerance to the substance. She staggers. Her face contorts in a dopey sneer as she realises the danger that these two sweet househunters present to her. She didn’t even tell Carol at the desk at Top Floor Realty that she had taken the keys for the Pringle place by the lakeside. No one knew she was here.
The parquet floors really are immaculate and have been polished to a beautiful sheen for the showhouse. Sarah slips on her way out. He follows.
She made it to her vehicle before he got her, the bonnet of the car finished the job that the chloroform had started.
Sarah was like all the other estate agents whose airbrushed smile on a magnetic sign is added to their collection. Sarah and the sedan both fetch a fair price. They were almost pristine, despite a few dings.
by submission | Jun 6, 2026 | Story
Author: Colin Jeffrey
If there’s anyone who knows more about aliens than Dreagle Fungebiskit, I’ll eat my hats.
He’s what you’d call an authority on all the extraterrestrial beings, their habits, and motivations. And I don’t say that lightly – he’s only got a bunch of them living in jars on his bench.
Ugly little creatures, with just two arms and two legs. And don’t start me on them only having the one head. How the Gumley do they manage to eat and think at the same time?!
But, then, I know nothing about them compared to what Dreagle knows. Particularly as he’s cut up a few in his time. He lets me watch sometimes – they have innards like a swamp bug and, by Gumley, the poor little things put up a mighty racket when you put the knife to ’em!
Dreagle says that’s because they feel what he calls “pain” and – the worst part – their limbs don’t grow back when they lose one! Dreagle says they’re primitive, backwards creatures.
He keeps them all in jars supplied with some sort of nutrient via a tube. Their skin looks soft and a bit greasy under the glow-lamps – not robust and shiny like our scales.
Sometimes, at night when I’m sweeping the floors, I swear they’re staring at me with those unworldly, round eyes. Big and wet and so full of something I can’t name. Dreagle says its “fear,” but it feels like something else to me.
“They’re fascinating, in a pathetic way,” Dreagle says, poking at one of them with a pair of tweezers. “So flimsy. One circulatory pump, very few filtration units, and a single, unarmored skull. One good hit and they’re off to Gumley. Probably Nature’s clumsiest accident, really.”
I nod as always. He’s the expert, after all. But sometimes I see them huddled together in the jar, holding hands. Makes me almost believe they have real thoughts and feelings, just like we do. But Dreagle says I’m just mistaking dumb animal responses for our own, superior, behaviour.
Dreagle’s been studying them for years, and only he’s allowed to handle them directly. Says I’m too soft. Says I “hesitate,” – don’t snatch ’em up fast and kill ’em quick. Maybe he’s right. But every time he opens up one of their bodies on the bench, I feel a little something in my own chest twist a little.
The other day, Dreagle told me he’d learned enough about the creatures. “Time for the final round of experiments,” he said, grinning. There was something in that statement that made me like him a little less just then.
Last night, something got the better of me. While Dreagle was sleeping, I crept down to the workroom, looked in on them. I pressed my hand to the glass and one of them put its strange, five-pronged appendage up against mine. It made a soft, low sound and I could almost swear it said something like “please.”
I don’t know what Dreagle will do when he finds out I’ve unlocked all the jar seals, let the critters run free. Maybe he’ll cut me up, too.
The way I see it, though, any animals smart enough to fly to the stars with just one head, and limbs that don’t regrow might just deserve another chance. And, somehow, I feel better for giving it to them.
by submission | Jun 5, 2026 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
The up-arrow light dinged off and the doors slid open as I stepped onto the elevator at my office building, early for work, as usual. There was one person in the car standing in the exact center. That was strange because this was the lowest floor and he made no move to get off. Wherever he had come from before, he was going back up that way. I did a double take, and he appeared familiar to me, as if I had seen him very recently. I choose to ignore that mental earworm and head for my office. I pressed the button for my floor, and I stepped past the gentleman and against the back wall, facing the closing doors. And we went up.
As we quickly ascended, I remembered the weird ordinance that stipulates you can’t talk to someone in an elevator. There is probably no one who has ever been ticketed for breaking that rule. That’s when I realized how I knew the stranger; I had spoken to him. In a dream last night. He had his back to me, like he did now, and then turned and said, ‘you are not going all the way up.’ I don’t think we were on an elevator in the dream, despite the related statement.
Just then the elevator bucked and abruptly stopped. After a second, followed by a disturbingly grinding sound from overhead, the car dropped a short distance. I grabbed the flat bar against the wall, barely keeping my feet. I don’t think the stranger moved or even flinched. Except he turned to me, exactly like the dream.
The elevator imploded. The ceiling caved in and a chunky, black grease-stained, apparatus crashed through the roof, took out the stranger standing in the middle and punched through the floor, taking with it three-quarters of the rubber coated surface. The car plummeted further and I had no idea how far because the lights had been ripped away by whatever pierced the lift. Seconds later it halted, tilting at an angle and I was dangling over the precipice of what was left of the floor, staring down into a dark cavity. My death grip on the handle was the only thing preventing me from descending into the abyss. A yellow emergency light in the corner, which was barely hanging on by a wire, blinked on providing a sparse amount of illumination as it swung about.
I was standing on twelve inches of what was left of the base of the car. The crater in the center was a black hole that yawned beyond the crest below my shoes. A foul breeze wafted up from the depths, with a stench of decay. How far down it went I couldn’t say, most likely all the way to hell. I dared to squint up, and the ceiling looked as if a giant bullet had been shot through it, shredded metal fringes dangling down. My breath had caught in my throat for the space of the minute since the episode happened, before I remembered to inhale. And scream.
It took over two hours for a fireman to attach a harness to me and cradled my trembling body down to safety. I sat there in the lobby, wrapped in a foil blanket, sipping a bottle of water, explaining to several officials what I could remember. Eventually a policeman spoke to me.
“Are you sure about the man in the middle of the elevator?”
“Yes, why?”
“When they checked the bottom of the shaft, they only found the broken mechanism. No sign of a body.”
“He had to be there. It was the only reason I wasn’t… standing… in the center…”
by submission | Jun 4, 2026 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
Warren’s specialty was to reshape the facts, he was a manipulator of the truth. Apart from the burning desire to be incredibly wealthy he had no interest in politics or economics and was unhindered by conscience or ethics. Perhaps this was why he was the best, there were others who were also adept but Warren was the maestro and they, by comparison, were merely minions. He worked for whoever was able to pay and this was now almost exclusively those in power. He was constantly supplied with the narratives they needed him to restructure.
Warren’s workspace was vast and the factory was, to all intents and purposes, a massive shelving unit. The D-vices were safely stacked on each and every shelf and had been painstakingly catalogued. All of the models currently in use were equally represented. When Warren uploaded a Fallacy onto a particular D-vice he knew exactly where it would first surface and to where it would eventually be traced.
Warren understood that in this, the age of surveillance, the populists were ready and willing to disbelieve what they could plainly see and hear. As long as an alternative was out in the ether and gaining traction they could and would be swayed.
Warren hasn’t left the factory in more than a decade. He has everything he needs in his office; all the comforts of home and he has enough money to fund hundreds upon hundreds of ridiculously extravagant lives. When the latest regime is overthrown, and Warren suspects that will be very soon, he intends to walk away. When he abandons the factory and switches off the power the D-vices will quickly run down and all those sources of misinformation, of lies, will lay dormant awaiting their eventual discovery.
Warren supposes that one of the first things he will do when he leaves is to visit a store and purchase a D-vice of his own, although he has no idea what he will do with it.
by submission | Jun 3, 2026 | Story |
Author: Amanda Fetters
You scramble against the upholstery.
“What are you doing?”
—Hold still.
“No, really. What are you doing.”
—Making a copy. Stop squirming. We could have been done by now.
“A copy of what?”
—Your ≹§.
“My…?”
—It’s not a great translation, but roughly interpreted: your soul.
“You’re making a copy…of…my soul?” A moment of incomprehension, then you’re frantic to cover up.
Even fully clothed, you feel exposed, indecent. Naked.
—Affirmative. Shut up.
The spirit or entity or maybe demon transfers your copied ≹§ to a set of complicated scales, multi-panned with several crossbeams and more than one fulcrum. Gears click and whir until they shriek and smoke, and its meters fluctuate with varied neon hues.
—“Oh for the love of .
“Is something wrong?”
You get the sense the entity is holding a clipboard.
—I’m afraid…well. There it is.
A slot spits out a long, narrow receipt. You reach for it.
Partial to animated fantasy films
Wears the same three niche graphic tees on rotation
Musical tastes stalled in 1994
“Alternative peaked in ‘94,” you say, already on the defensive.
Relishes Broadway musicals, but only admits it in select company
Will not eat kimchi
You have the distinct impression that the entity is frowning.
Avoids committing to anything resembling an RSVP
Freezes in 99.9% of tense situations
You say nothing because you’re frozen.
Secretly believes they are an undiscovered genius
Secretly believes their mother was a pathological liar
Secretly believes all existence is an illusion
—I can assure you: it is not.
You blush. You want to ask questions, but the receipt is still printing.
Dreams of owning chickens, but is too squeamish to clean a coop
Dreams of seeing the Taj Mahal, but is too apathetic to book travel
Dreams of earning a fine arts degree, but is too cowardly to risk rejection
—Thank you, that is all we need.
You blink. “That’s it? That’s my soul? What about my personal morals, my core beliefs? And who is we?”
A slight hesitation.
—Irrelevant.
“Will you share it with anyone?”
—No.
“Will you share it with anything?”
—Possibly.
“I do not give my consent.”
—Sadly, this is not a matter of consent. I need you to stop worrying so much. I assure you, this process is harmless.
“Are you storing this somewhere?”
—Securely.
“I asked where, not how.” You twist in your seat, looking for an exit.
—Stop lolling about like that. We could have been finished ages ago.
