This month's Lightspeed Fantasy Short Shots episode features "Songs of the Sorrow of Thorns" by Amayah Perveen (© 2024 by Amayah Perveen), narrated by Susan Hanfield and "A Guide on How to meet the Deity of Many Faces" by Oyedotun Damilola Muees (© 2024 by Oyedotun Damilola Muees), narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You’re asleep in dreams of your father holding your head underwater, so the call from Magnolia Assisted Living goes to voicemail. | © 2024 by Dominique Dickey. Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today makes it a decade and a day I have been keeping tabs on you. I started by watching your mother, monitoring all her movements while she housed you. There’s no better time to relay this message but now. | © 2024 by Oyedotun Damilola Muees. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve never been so busy. The cave where we work used to be calm and, if not entirely devoid of sound, then split only by the crash of waves at high tide and the occasional cry of a woman who didn’t listen when we said listen this will hurt this will hurt this will hurt. Or maybe she did listen, but she thought we meant physical pain, when what we meant was your heart your heart your heart. | © 2024 by Shanna Germain. Read by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

The trouble started after my husband reported a strange Zoom call at work. | © 2024 by Dominica Phetteplace. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The towering granite shoulders of the mountain god braced against the blue heavens above. Eero’s eyes remained closed beneath his glacial mask, his body swathed in a cloak of green trees. | © 2024 by Deborah L. Davitt. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Udo Gehler saw his next opponent was the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance and didn’t even blink. | © 2024 by Andrea Kriz. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are a near-infinite number of strange and marvelous worlds in this Universe, and in all of them there are Cats. | © 2024 by Megan Chee. Read by Scott Peterson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dawn shot a quiver of cirrus that smeared like sunscreen across the sky. Bini had been awake for hours, back aching. She was too old for this shit. | © 2024 by dave ring. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Deep in the abyss of the Unholy Bazaar, in a shop that reeked of death and god-blood, Sparrow lay screaming in a web of rope and unbreakable silk. | © 2024 by Varsha Dinesh. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I want to tell you everything. I should tell you that you’re the greatest accomplishment our people have ever produced. I should tell you that you’re loved. | © 2024 by Ash Howell. Narrated by Alison Belle Bews Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The night before the comet hit, Richard Milhous Nixon awoke restless and well before dawn. | © 2024 by P H Lee. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She should go back inside the watchpod. Maree and Blaise didn’t have to be dead. | © 2024 by Nisi Shawl. Narrated by Alison Belle Bews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gemma checks and rechecks the stories and songs, but she can’t find anything that says you have to go back. | © 2024 by Marissa Lingen. Narrated by Alison Belle Bews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So much for Shapcott’s harbinger of astronautical doom. He hasn’t seen her at all. Or anyone, obviously. | © 2024 by Stephen Geigen-Miller. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I joined The Ministry in 2009. Before that, I worked in grocery stores, pawn shops, and liquor stores. | © 2024 by Ben Peek. Narrated by Ruth Wallman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. The first time you get our message, you only find one thread. It mimics your language in its simplest form, a single strand of words laid end to end. You will have to work hard if you want to understand us properly. You must learn to hold more than one thread of language simultaneously in your mind. | © 2024 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, Ruth Wallman, Alison Belle Bewes, and Caroline M....

As with Robert Johnson, a lot of people who believed in the devil also believed that Jack Malagan had made a deal with him. | © 2024 by Rory Harper. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lester swung his chainsaw, mowing a path through the mob of needle-toothed quantum parasites, while Kit batted clean-up with her Louisville Slugger. Across the plain of dark rock, their destination: a whirling, gnashing portal that could doom all humanity. It wasn’t ideal timing for an awkward conversation, but it never was. | © 2024 by Rich Larson. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome, Stranger! This is a story for you, you who wait for my words to fall into your ear, so that we can share being and become more than we are alone. | © 2024 by Vandana Singh. Narrated by Annette Oliveira, with Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of us remember what Mother’s Day was like before we became sterile: flowers and candy for living mothers and tears for dead ones and anger at bad ones, and women who couldn’t be mothers or who’d lost children marinating in grief, and nobody really profiting from any of it except Hallmark and the restaurants and florists. | © 2024 by Susan Palwick. Narrated by Judy Young Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a city called Salemo. Salemo sits atop a cliffside at the edge of a sea. | © 2024 by David Marino. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jo drives urgently as they race toward the star, not sure how far to go, racing because the baby is coming tonight, now, and He (a He, of course) is supposed to be born under the star, that’s how the story goes. | © 2024 by David Anaxagoras. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I know you’ve been following me since I left school, boarded the train, and took to the alley. Why didn’t I run? | © 2024 by Modupeoluwa Shelle. Narrated by Mirron Willis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Audio Recording, “Lydia and Ecco at Insight,” February 3, 2134 I didn’t run. If the boy had not called to you, you would have run. I would not have run. | © 2024 by Endria Isa Richardson. Narrated by Annette Oliveira. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices