In support of our Kickstarter (which you can help fund here by picking up some AMAZING merch), several of our favorite authors have written a one-sentence story about death for us to to share.
While you’re here, consider signing up to our email list–ALL of our issues are delivered in ePub and .pdf format to our subscribers FOR FREE on the 19th of every month:
Elizabeth Bear
Draped velvet on the lid of the coffin stares you down as you think, I should have paid for the speaking tube and somebody to come by and check it once in a while.
Christopher Barzak
I have seen this bridge before and known I had to cross it, though each time I have failed: by my walk, my unsteady balance, by my hesitation and reluctance to lay down the old bones of a life once cherished, that I try to carry with me; but the bridge can support the weight of only one, and I have compromised my crossings by telling you of all these failed crossings: the midnight covered bridge creaking beneath my lives, splintering with each false footstep, the rope bridge over the river, fraying as I walk it, the river washing away the things I could not bear to go without, because what would I have if I gave up everything…sometimes I see what I lack more than what I have in me: a puzzle with missing pieces, the gaps in the picture I am making are what I see, never what is already there, all from my habit of looking down too often out of fear of seeing nothing of myself reflected in your eyes; and you…you are trying to change this, by pulling my chin up by your fingertips, holding me steady, while you slide a new piece into the hot palm of my hand, putting me together again, so that, in this way, I will be able to cross, I will cross, I am crossing at a slow and steady pacing, into a life where I will learn to be someone else entirely, where what I have lost is waiting for me to reach the other side, praying for me as I take each step, their voices whispering to me: keep coming, they say from the far side of the bridge, you are almost here.
Aliette de Bodard
Beneath the pomegranate tree stands the tenth and final sister—mistress of the final court of hell, she who sends people away into the living world—and it is beneath the pomegranate tree that Sứ, drunk on something she cannot name, kisses that tenth and final sister, feeling the sweet, acid taste of pomegranate on her tongue, an aftermath of desire and regret all mingled into one.
Sam J. Miller
Six years gone, Paul could still hurt him, popping up in the oddest places – a stranger’s resonant slouch, an echo in the laughter in a darkened movie theater, the crooked teeth on the back of his neck under the midnight piers – because love means letting a shard of someone irrevocably into your soul, something that won’t take death for an answer.
Cherie Priest
I have gone to such trouble and made such plans to meet the fabled angel of death—but I do not plan to stay long in their realm, and I will not return to my own empty-handed.
Check out our Kickstarter–ends October 31st, and includes some fantastic deathy merch:
