You Are About to Experience the Awe and Mystery Which Reaches from the Inner Mind to — The Free Fiction Limits.

Another collection of links to great free fiction.  There are new and classic stories with all-new audio readings, another cool eZine posted, and great text fiction.  And as the Governator once said, I'll be back with e-books and more.


 [Art from the Drabblecast reading of "The Lurking Fear"]

 


 Fiction
• At L5R: "Gates of Chaos, Part 3" by Seth Mason. Fantasy.
      "Two hundred trained Unicorn veterans stood in formation by their mounts as Akodo Dairuko walked slowly past the front line. The Champion of the Lion Clan inspected each soldier as she walked by, her eyes darting quickly and precisely to each detail on the armor, weapons, mount, and the soldier before moving on to the next."

• At Nightmare: "How Far to Englishman’s Bay" by Matthew Cheney. Horror.
     "Max had made the decision that April morning to close up the bookshop and go away for once and for all, but he hadn’t told anyone yet, and he needed somebody to take the cat, so it was a good thing Jeffrey showed up an hour before closing."

• At Planet Magazine: "Encounter at Midnight" by Irene Maschke. Science Fiction.
     "Mick stared open-mouthed into a long, green face with deep wrinkles and two spindly antennae on top. The alien was a little shorter than himself and looked rather plump in its silvery space suit."

• At Weird Fiction: "Buddha Nostril Bird" by John Kessel. Science Fiction. 1990.
      "After we killed the guard, Glaucon and I ran down the corridor away from the Well. Glaucon had been seriously aged in the fight. He limped and cursed, a piece of dying meat and he knew it. I brushed my hand along the wall looking for a door." 

• Now Posted: Cafe Irreal #47 Summer 2013. Weird. Surreal. Mostly Flash.

• "The Man with his Back Turned" by Agustín Cadena
• "Wanted & Dance of the Mad Flies" by Fredric Mitchem
• "It's Not What You Think It Is" by Brian Biswas
• "Where Are The Plans?" by Jean-Marc Agrati
• "The Magic Bucket" by Srinjay Chakravarti
• "THINGS" by Bird Marathe
• "Travel, A Life, & Investment" by Ian Seed
• "The Counter Has Begun To Move" by Peter Fagan

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "The Dollmaker's Grief" by Michelle M. Denham.
• At Quantum Muse: "The Void" by Harris Tobias. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "No Portraits" by Clint Wilson. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Drabblecast: "The Lurking Fear" by H.P. Lovecraft. Horror.
      "There was thunder in the air on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop Tempest Mountain to find the lurking fear. I was not alone, for foolhardiness was not then mixed with that love of the grotesque and the terrible which has made my career a series of quests for strange horrors in literature and in life. With me were two faithful and muscular men for whom I had sent when the time came; men long associated with me in my ghastly explorations because of their peculiar fitness."

• At Nightmare: "How Far to Englishman’s Bay" by Matthew Cheney. Horror.
     "Max had made the decision that April morning to close up the bookshop and go away for once and for all, but he hadn’t told anyone yet, and he needed somebody to take the cat, so it was a good thing Jeffrey showed up an hour before closing."

• At 19 Nocturne Boulevard: "At the Sound of the Beep" by Julie Hoverson. Horror.
      "A woman's answering-machine tells a terrible tale of persecution."

• At PodCastle: "The Tree of Life" by C.L. Moore. Weird. Fantasy.
      "Over time-ruined Illar the searching planes swooped and circled. Northwest Smith, peering up at them with a steel-pale stare from the shelter of a half-collapsed temple, thought of vultures wheeling above carrion. All day long now they had been raking these ruins for him. Presently, he knew, thirst would begin to parch his throat and hunger to gnaw at him."

Other Free Fiction Linkers

• SF Signal
• Free SF Reader
• Free Speculative Fiction Online
• BestScienceFictionStories.com
• Variety SF
• SFFaudio

 Other Genres
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "Real Charity" by Rhys Timson,

Magazines and More Freebies

Several great stories to start the weekend.  There's just so many good ones, I don't know which to highlight. Let's just say I highlighted them all.  Horror fans should look to the audio section where three great podcasts have horror stories listed today. 


[Art from "The Trickster's Bones" listed below.]





Fiction
At Anotherealm: "The Harder They Fall" by Erin Smith. Speculative Fiction.
     "There was no roar of the crowd; many of them sat with bored looks on their faces. There was an occasional scream. They were screaming,"

At Buzzy Mag: "The Trickster’s Bones" by Kenneth Kao. Urban Fantasy.
     "We had many adventures over those summer months.  I, with the metal detector Dad gave me for my eighth birthday, and Darwin with his big digging claws that could tear through earth better than even a grown-up with a shovel."

At The Colored Lens: "The Roller Coaster" by Justin Key. Speculative Fiction.
     "No Country Club for Old Men was built at the bottom of a small mountain, much like everything else in Martinsville, Virginia. The town had more hills than convenience stores and the one leading up to Bob Woods’ country club was particularly steep."

At Cosmos:  "Reading By Numbers" by Aidan Doyle. Speculative Fiction.
      "28 – The end came when I saw a documentary about an autistic savant who could perform astonishing feats of calculation and memory. He recited pi from memory to 22,514 digits. I could not do this."

At Daily Science Fiction: "A Handful of Glass, a Sky without Stars" by Damien Walters Grintalis.
      "Mia held her wrist up to the security panel outside the pharmaceutical club and waited while her identification and prescription were verified. A light on the panel flashed twice. The airlock doors opened."

At Nature: "Midnight in the Cathedral of Time" by Preston Grassmann. Science Fiction.
       "The man I'm searching for sits in the corner of the tent and looks up slowly. His eyes catch a glint of light from mechanically modified plasma-eels that swim in a tank at the entrance of his shop. As I enter, he smiles and hunches slowly forward, a conspirator waiting to whisper a secret." 

At Interstellar Fiction:

"On the Night Shift" by M. Bennardo. Science Fiction.
      "Three months into the night shift, things were just as quiet as could be. Dale and I were rotating eight-hour stints babysitting the ship, but it had been weeks since we’d heard so much as a peep anywhere in the place"
"Robot Blues, Alien Brews" by D. Ahren Bell. Science Fiction.
     "…<>"
 "Jury of Peers" by Hunter Liguore. Science Fiction.
     "As the premier delegate called the court to order, the jurors hurried to their booths. Five hundred jury members in all, the same number that made up the entire community, less the children."
"Brooding in the Dark" by Philip Edward Kaldon. Science Fiction.
       "Three months into the night shift, things were just as quiet as could be. Dale and I were rotating eight-hour stints babysitting the ship, but it had been weeks since we’d heard so much as a peep anywhere in the place."
"Out With the Crowd" by Michael Haynes. Science Fiction.
      "Alex Choo, pitcher of the Des Moines Sting, consulted his neural boost as Jordan Smith walked to the plate in the top of the seventh inning of game seven of the World Series."

Now Posted: Scifaikuest Vol.10 No. 2 Speculative Japanese poetry forms.

Now Posted Cafe Irreal #44. Surreal Fantasy.

• Three Sponge Baths by Christopher Prewitt
• The Horse Factory by Michael Paul Workman
• Cynosure by Paul Blaney
• New Donald Moffit Prose Poem (inc. footnotes) by Patrick Cosgrove
• Leaves the City in Silence by James Bambury

Audio
At Cast of Wonders:  "Once There Was A Hero…" by Jenny Moore. YA Fantasy.
     "The demon had come this way not long ago. The grass still smoked from its passing and the stench of rotten eggs hung heavy on the air.Kern of Thornrath stared at the mountains ahead and flexed his jaw muscles—"

At The Classic Tales Podcast: "The Empty House" by Algernon Blackwood. Horror.
     "Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particular feature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and an ingenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with their being: that they are evil."

At Pseudopod: "Night Fishing" by Ray Cluley. Horror.
     "Statistics varied. One jumped every two weeks or thirty jumped per year, and Terrence had read somewhere else that every month saw as many as five people drop to their deaths."

At Tales to Terrify: "The Secret in the House of Smiles" by Paul Jessop. Horror.
     "Jack cut up pictures of girls with thin razors and then glued the most pleasing body parts together onto a single white sheet of paper."

Old Time Radio
At OTR Plot Spot:  "'An Evening's Entertainment" - The Black Mass (1964) and - "Metzengerstein" by Poe - Columbia Workshop (1937) . Horror.

Other Genres

• Audio at LibriVox: The Poisoned Pen by Arthur B. Reeve. Mystery.
• Audio at The New Yorker:  "Roy Spivey" by Miranda July.
• Fiction at The Western Online: "Bloodhound" by Amanda Foti. Western.