Read the Free Fiction, Luke

A wide variety of great free fiction today, including Lightspeed, Protecting Project Pulp, Goblin Fruit, and many other great sites. And more to come later. And thanks to Regan Wolfrom at SF Signal for a couple cool links this time!
[Art for ""The Opener of the Way" in audio fiction]










Fiction
• At Author's Site: "Safety Tests" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Science Fiction.
     "Devlin trudges through his job on the space station waiting for retirement and hoping he won’t die first. A test pilot with Licensing and Regulation, he makes sure only the most qualified pilots make it to the test flight, let alone pass it. But sometimes, even the most jaded tester misses something. And the difference between life and death on a space station? Missing nothing. Nothing at all."

• At The Colored Lens: "The Flower Garden – Part 2" by Michael Shone.
     "Greg knew his thinking was impaired. He was halfway back to his father’s house, with Annie in the passenger seat nursing two doggy bags. And it meant that he was also going to have to run her back into town later. She might have some vague plan about staying over, but if she did, this was the worst possible way to go about it."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "The Velveteen Rabbit Says Goodbye" by Melissa Mead. Fantasy. 
       "There once was a rabbit who had been made of velveteen. For many years now he'd been Real--not just Real in the eyes of the Boy who loved him, but real to the world of grown-ups and rabbits with twitching noses and springy hind legs."

• At Lightspeed: "Angelus" by Nina Allan. Science Fiction.
      "He was in the bathroom cleaning the taps. I could only see the back of him—an overlong measure of spine, the lean, narrow shoulders hunched forward slightly as he polished the chrome with the yellow duster—but there was no doubt in my mind that it was him. I hadn’t seen him for fifteen years and had received no news of him in all that time."

• At Lightspeed: "Homecoming" by Seanan McGuire. Fantasy.
      "The locker room is always tense before a game. Alisa is trying to get her uniform to stay in place, counting more on safety pins and prayer than she probably should, and Birdie—true to her name—keeps whistling, which is probably going to get her slapped if she doesn’t stop soon. Cram twenty girls from opposing squads into one small space and tensions are going to flare."

• At Weird Fiction Review: "Senbazuru" by V.H. Leslie.Horror.
      "After all these years he knows how I play, my preference for paper, stretching out my hand as if holding it above a flame. I watch his calculated response, knowing his reaction in advance; his index and middle finger stretched into a V if he is being particularly stubborn or folded into a ball to satisfy me, letting me win."

Flash Fiction and Poetry
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Breaking the Wedge" by Scott Summers. Science Fiction.
At Goblin Fruit: Fantasy poems.

• "Self Portrait in Tempera" by Dan Campbell. Fantasy.
• "What Is Owed" by C.S.E. Cooney. Fantasy.
• "I Will Show You a Single Treasure from the Treasures of Shah Niyaz" by Rose Lemberg. Fantasy.
• "Deity of Heat" by Cheryl Wood Ruggiero. Fantasy.
• "Desire Lines" by Sara Saab. Fantasy.
• "Goddess" by Michelle Yost. Fantasy.
• "Singing the Plains" by Rachael Bundock. Fantasy.
• "Better Late Than Never" by L. C. Ricardo . Fantasy.

At Flash Fiction Online:

• "The Social Phobic’s Guide to Interior Design" by Sarah Grey. Speculative Fiction.
• "The Shallows" by Nathaniel Lee. Science Fiction. 
• "Egocentric Orbit" by John Cory. Science Fiction. 1960.

Audio Fiction
At Dark Fiction Magazine. Horror.

• "A Map of Mercury" by Alastair Reynolds.
     “When we can rebuild our bodies, what is it that makes us human? And when we can mould the universe, what are the limits of art? A look into the future with the legendary Alastair Reynolds.
 
• "We’ll Always Be Here" by S. L. Grey.
     "Homicidal robots, misfit children, apocalyptic asteroids and Next Top Model. A celestial horror story that could only come from the warped minds behind The Mall and The New Girl."

• "Wish for a Gun" by Sam Sykes.
     "A grieving widower in a small Western town wants only to ease his loneliness – but in the hands of dark powers, even the best of intentions can go horribly wrong. A finalist for the British Fantasy Award’s “Best Short Story” of 2012."
• "Death on Elsewhere Street" by Jaine Fenn.
     "The Angels’ work for the city, legalised assassins. But when one goes rogue, is an execution justified or murder?"

• At Drabblecast: "Twenty Ways the Desert Could Kill You" by Sarah Pinkster. Fantasy.
     "3. The cactus isn’t poisonous, and neither is the snake, but the snake’s venom is a powerful anti-coagulant. You could bleed to death from the place you were bitten and/or pricked." and "Improved Stars" by Chantal Beaulne.

• At The Drama Pod: "QD-Twelve" by Mike Murphy. Full cast dramatization.
      "A superstitious man is delivered a mysterious prophecy proclaiming  he will die at Twelve."

• At Lightspeed: "Homecoming" by Seanan McGuire. Narrated by Judy Young. Fantasy.
      "The locker room is always tense before a game. Alisa is trying to get her uniform to stay in place, counting more on safety pins and prayer than she probably should, and Birdie—true to her name—keeps whistling, which is probably going to get her slapped if she doesn’t stop soon. Cram twenty girls from opposing squads into one small space and tensions are going to flare."

• At 19 Nocturne Boulevard: "The Deadly City, part 3 of 3" by Ivar Jorgenson (Paul W. Fairman). Read by Julie Hoverson. Science Fiction.
      "Waking up to find themselves in a completely vacated city, several people try to cope."

• At Protecting Project Pulp: "The Opener of the Way" by Robert Bloch,  Narrator: Simon Hildebrandt.  Horror.
      "A tremendous tale about the dread doom that overtook an archeologist in that forgotten tomb beneath the desert sands of Egypt". first published in Weird Tales, October 1936.

Other Genres

• Fiction at Project Gutenberg: Whispers at Dawn by Roy J. Snell. YA. Mystery. 1934.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "The Waiting Room" by Sarah Grill.