Short Fiction
Short Fiction from issues of Apex Magazine
If a Bird Can Be a Ghost
5,000 Words Listen to the Apex Magazine Podcast narration of “If a Bird Can Be a Ghost.” Shelly’s grandma teaches her about ghosts, how to carry them in her hair. If you carry your ghosts in your hair, then you can cut them off when you don’t need them anymore. Otherwise,...
Read MoreEntertaining Demons (Novel Excerpt)
1. DOWNING, ENGLAND The night reveled in paradox; flattening sleepers with heat while venting anger in wind and rain. Summer storms held the most fury, lashing out like a confused child. Molly lay in bed, listening to a distant gate slam back and forth, rattling in its moorings....
Read MoreTHE TURING MACHINES OF BABEL
7,200 Words In most respects, the universe (which some call the Library) is everywhere the same, and we at the summit are like the rest of you below. Like you, we dwell in a string of hexagonal library chambers connected by hallways that run infinitely east and west. Like you, we revere...
Read More«Légendaire.»
9,400 Words Having seen the reggaezzi perform, the righteous of Sea-john shake their heads in wonder. They will then murmur severally or as one, «Légendaire.» [Tonight] The cavalcade forms up. In beats, without words, the drummers argue a bass line. While higher registers wait in...
Read MoreL’appel du vide
5,000 Words The summer sky was stacking dark clouds when Pau trudged up from the concrete gullet of the parkade. Sweat stuck his shirt to the small of his back and the biolocked handle of his Ceylan Industries suitcase was slippery. Looking over the shrunken brown swatches of lawn and...
Read MoreSundown
[Colorado, 1877] Willie Kennard rode into the town of Duffy dangerously late, looking back over his shoulder at the height of the sun and squinting. He dropped down from the old mare he’d borrowed off Wilson Hayes and hitched her to a post. Every step shifted two days’ dust and grit off...
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