By E. M. Eastick

His voice is gruff and quick. “They want the stuff, see. They want to live like us Earthlings with our sonic transporters and high-cap’ image enhancers. They want

By Khushi Priya

Year 2026, Day 69

It has been twelve years since XR-42 was commissioned on Earth. The spy transformed itself into a wood to intercept the secret

By Tom Gdisis

“Last one out is a rotten alien egg,” Cheryl laughed as she opened the door to the return space pod.

“I’ll make sure to do a final wave to the space station for

By Yi-jung Chen

In the moonless woods of the mountain, Ajay dragged his shattered soul along the rusting wire fence, the hum of concrete mixers from the valley still ringing in his

By Julie Wornan

It stood there in the dark just beyond the foot of her bed. It was a spindly form, so tall that it went from the floor up to the ceiling and it had to bend its head a

By Sean S Licciardi

The bumblebee arrived in such a condition of concentrated outrage that for one moment I assumed someone must have insulted a flower.

She struck the window

By Rhiannon Stevens

Heat pressed against Jane’s grey sedan, overwhelming its faulty air-conditioning and the hackberry’s meagre shade. Liberty Park was leafy and neighbourly: an old man

By Fulvio Gatti

“Daddy! Why don’t I look like you?”

I cough to buy time, focusing on my driving.

Even though I’d known my son Caleb would raise the issue some day, I

By Chris Doty-Dunn

Growing up, Pa told Jeremiah and me tales about his still’s magic. Told us before we knew what whiskey was. Probably before we knew what magic was, either.

I

By J.S. O’Keefe

This morning my vizsla ate a jackrabbit and then promptly coughed it up onto the kitchen floor. 

I stare at the red heap spread across the linoleum. “What

By Greg Ballinger

Dennis Firefox found himself sitting in a comfortable reclining chair behind a huge mahogany desk. The sun slanted through the blind on an enormous window and outside

By David Dumouriez

Monday, April 1 2126

 “Lexi darling, sorry I couldn’t answer you earlier. Honestly, I’ve been rushed off my feet!” 

“Oh Ronda, do

By Mark J Rankin

I first saw Harold levitate when he was fifty years old. I’m not sure how long he had possessed that capability before then, but when he showed me, he seemed pleasantly

By Deborah Sheldon

I hid the stake inside my tuxedo

as he led a woman in the tango,

his hand low on her spine; that silver dress

flashed like her

By Bailey Jones

I pulled a marshmallow out of the campfire; it was slightly burned.

The person next to me turned over onto his back. We sat for a moment, looking towards the

By Robert Willis

It began with a small bright flash and a faint cry of pain.

Clark Waugh was hiking the North Downs, as he has done many times. Walking past the Thurnham Castle

By Nicolas Van Der Haar

My Alien. Odd to think of him as mine. I mean, I don’t even think of him as a ‘he’. Is he an it? It’s much too late to ask. I filled out a form at work, and the

By Paul Radcliffe

They looked like teddy bears. Well, a bitlike teddy bears but at five-year-old Oscar's experience of extraterrestrials was limited. He had seen them on

By Philipp Knutzen

No, no, no, that can’t be true. I’m not like that. Or am I?

I had volunteered as a test subject for a new device that promised to revolutionise the world of