A Dance With Free Fiction

It's another good morning for free fiction as Tor.com and Nightmare Magazine bring us some great stories, and there are flash fiction stories and audio fiction tales worthy of attention. I don't normally mention the videos, but I must warn everyone that today's video shouts out the f-bomb so don't play it at work!

[Art from "Thief of War" in Fiction below]


Fiction

• At Nightmare Magazine: "The Nest" by C. S. McMullen. Horror.
     “Come in, come in!” the man said, sitting like a god in the middle of the room, grinning at me through broken teeth. He levered himself out of his chair, breathing heavily, and then tottered over to the wall and pressed hard against it. Under his hand, ants scurried frantically through their tunnels. “It’s quite safe. Two solid sheets of Perspex, each over an inch thick, layered over the original house’s walls. They’ve got a gap of about four inches between them, for the dirt, but the whole thing is completely sealed. There’s no chance of them escaping.

• At Tor.com: "Drona’s Death" by Max Gladstone.

    "Some songs tell of good wars, kind wars, wars where, when the fighting’s over, you sit alone in the woods and breathe and think, this was good, this thing I’ve done. I have saved lives, I have served my king, I am the man I always hoped to be. Drona’s heard these songs; he’s never seen the wars they mean."

• At Tor.com: "Thief of War" by Beth Bernobich. Fantasy.
      "Arbija will do anything to stop the Erythandran Empire from conquering her homeland. She will take on a new name, a new past, even a new face, all so she can infiltrate the palace and steal the Empire’s more powerful magical artifacts. With these weapons, surely she can defend her people and keep them safe and free. Can she succeed where her sister failed?"

Flash Fiction

• At AE: "White Noise" by Geoff Gander. Science Fiction. [via SF Signal]
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Ebb and Flow" by LaShawn M. Wanak. Fantasy.
• At Every Day Fiction: "Night Stalking" by Milo James Fowler. Horror.
• At Yesteryear Fiction: "Soldier X24K" by Madeline Dyer. Fantasy.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The Other Side of the Screen" by Ian Muneshwar. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Every Photo Tells: "Duck Duck Goose Symbiont" by A.F. Grappin. Science Fiction.
     "When a duck is your host and geese get you in an accident…"

• At LibriVox: The Wonder Clock by Howard Pylle. YA Fairy Tales.
      "Four and twenty marvellous tales, one for each hour of the day," retold in a novel and entertaining manner by a master of the form. While drawing on German, English, and Scandinavian folk literature for many of his characters and plots, Pyle reworks the material in an imaginative way, crafting the tales in his own inimitable style."

OtherGenres

• Fiction at HiLobrow: "The Zayat Kiss - Part 2" by Sax Rohmer, Noir. 1912.
• Flash Fiction at Smokelong Weekly: "The Circus" by Carla Chait.