by Daniel Abraham.
Read by Kip Manley.
Read by Dave Thompson

“He’d been down here about six years when I knew him. Had a girl he was seeing name of Corine. She was pretty. Had this line of dark little moles, just like pinpricks, all along her jaw. Made me think of the sort of bangles they put on women’s veils out in Baghdad. She’d come by the shop sometimes, and we’d have to make him stop working until she went away for fear he’d get distracted and lose a finger.

“He’d been seeing her for maybe six months when Martin Luther King got killed. That was before you were born, so I don’t expect you’d understand it. And, honest to God, I’d never say this outside the family, but the Blacks have got a whole different contry they live in. Even someone like the Swede who worked with us and drank beer with us and all? Now I was sorry to hear about it when King died, and I’m not ashamed to say it. But it wasn’t that much to me. For the Blacks, though. . .”

Dab shook his head.

“It was different for them. What with everything else that was going on back then, King’s getting shot was like Kennedy in Dallas and the planes in New York all wrapped up in one…

Rated R. for language and difficult situations.

by Sandra McDonald.
Read by David O. Engelstad.

“I present to you the academy’s 150th class of brave, skilled, hard-working probationary firefighters!” Chief Kelly finally said.

Oh, shit.

Rated R. for fiery language.

by Ursula Pflug.
Read by Christiana Ellis.

You and I were different. Making love on sprawling landings we learned that one way of life wasn’t better than another, and that we all shared the same ultimate misery, doomed to be born and die in this building. Who’d made this place? Had we built it ourselves generations ago when we still had legs to run from something fierce and predatory that circled our tower, waiting for travellers: the jumpers, the fliers, those with the twisted bed sheet ropes?

Rated R. for sex and dismemberment in enclosed places.

by Stephen Woodworth.
Read by Paul S. Jenkins (of the Rev Up Review.

The Olverung is an ugly bird.  Its bulbous head juts from the spout of a scrawny neck, and warts dot the bridge of its fat beak.  When it struts upon the ground, its pot-bellied body waddles with the ludicrous gait of a town drunkard.  Its plumage has the black iridescence of a fly’s abdomen and is too coarse even for pillow stuffing.  Yet the fowl possesses one singular attribute that princes and popes have coveted for centuries, and it was for this sole virtue that Lord Atherton entreated me to steal the creature from the King.

Rated R for tugged heartstrings.

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By Cat Rambo.
Read by C. G. Furst.

“What’s that?” Ivory said.

We stared down through the darkness. There was no one else around; it was off-season and our waiter had deserted us before the sun had set.

Trevor stood, glancing at me. “I’m going to check it out.”

“Could be a crocodile. You never know what you’ll find in Thailand.” Ivory didn’t move but her voice was unalarmed. “Feel free, boys. I’ll be right here.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” He grinned at her, flashing perfect white teeth.

“Left behind in an LA hotel room,” she said.

So Trevor and I went together with cautious steps. There was a steep grade to the side of the river, and thorny vines tore at us as we half-fell down it before encountering the sticky grasp of red clay mud threatening to pull our Tevas off.

She lay naked on the riverbank like a fallen swan. Her bare flesh white as snow, her hair midnight black. Her feet were thin and fragile as newly pedicured mourning doves, not a smudge or callus except for the mud that covered her.

Rated R. Contains non-vanilla adult sex.

By Eugie Foster.
Read by Diane Severson.

When we reached the south entrance, Nai-nai stopped. “An-ying, there is great passion in you,” she said. “A blessing and a curse, I have always maintained, that you were born in both the year and the hour of the rabbit but also beneath the auspice of fire. Fire rabbits are impetuous and brash.”

“But I–”

She bumped me with her shoulder. “Outspoken and discourteous, too.”

“I’m sorry, Nai-nai.” I lowered my head and flattened my ears in a conciliatory manner.

She nibbled my fur. “I’m not angry, granddaughter, but you should know we feared for you, your mother and I. Even your coat is marked by fire, and it is well known that fire rabbits die young.”

Rated R. for frank descriptions of adult events.

Captain Fantasy and the Secret Masters

by Tim Pratt

The door slid open, revealing another corridor. Floor, walls, and ceiling were all the color of used motor oil, and cameras bristled every couple of feet. “Welcome to the Black Wing, Li.”

I didn’t step inside. “I heard you’ve got Bludgeon Man locked up in here. And Junior Atwater’s brain, in a jar.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard those, too,” Brady said. “People believe any damn thing, don’t they? Now come on. If this door stays open too long, alarms go crazy, and we’ll be neck-deep in very tense guards.”

I stepped over the threshold. The black wing was like the inside of a tumor. No wonder mental institutions favor soothing colors to pacify the patients. These walls had the opposite effect; they could drive a sane person mad. The Black Wing surely held a few mental patients, the ones with extraordinary powers. The ones who could enforce their delusions on the world, if they got free.

In Ashes

by Helen Keeble

From the time my twin brother and I were four, our mother only gave us raw food. Before then I can remember sometimes eating cold, cooked things—porridge congealed onto the bottom of my bowl, soups with a white floating scum of fats—but that stopped after our fourth birthday, when my brother laughed and said “Hot!” as he tasted the cake that my mother had spent an hour baking and three days cooling. She whipped him for that, while I howled and hung onto her arm, and sent us both to our beds in the cowshed. Later she came out with two handfuls of dried apricots and hugged us in the dark, her great rough hands pressing our faces against her chest—but the next day there was only raw food for dinner, withered apples and sliced turnip, and the day after that, and the day after that.

The next time our birthday came round, I whined for a cake, but she said we could only have one if my brother would blow out a candle. For me, he tried, drawing in huge breath after huge breath while I gripped his crippled hand under the table, squeezing encouragement; but each lungful of air trickled out unused as he stared rapt at the flickering light. My mother sat opposite us, expressionless and still, the flame reflected in her eyes. The candle burned down to a melted pool of wax and went out. My mother never made another cake. I never saw her cook anything ever again.

Shard of Glass

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

“Get in the car, Leah,” my mother said. Her already husky voice was pitched low, as though she’d been crying. That made me nervous. Why was she here?

“Ma, Chloe was going to show me her dad’s new camera. Can’t I go home on the bus?”

My mom pulled on the cigarette until it burned the filter, and then ground it into the car ashtray—already filled with forty or so butts. She always emptied out the ashtray each evening.

“Get in the car, Leah.” My mom’s voice was even huskier as she lit another cigarette and tossed the match out of the window. (Continue Reading…)