Dark, dystopian short stories added every month for your reading pleasure. Only minutes to read, and packed with technological marvels and disturbing, stark futurescapes.
A Report for You
The dead can’t tell you they love you. That’s why I survived. That’s why I crawled like a lizard from the pile of broken grey bricks and through the thick choking smog of destruction dust. The dead are gone; their flesh is waste in the dirt. It smells of disintegration – no flow of blood,…
The Betrayal
The soft electric hum of generators and the continual light suck of air filters didn’t register in the hearing of those on board the space station anymore. The expanse of the circular control deck, especially, was so familiar to those who worked it that it was furniture, like the skin of their day. For the…
There’s Something in the Water
I hesitated at the door. It was a door I usually hesitated at, but this time was different. My skin felt like a flimsy membrane; it was like I was hollow. Inside that space was a heavy, dark fog, one that stirred when I moved, so I kept still to see if it would too.…
Food for Thought
“Lights out!” said Dad, “The AI is about to start feeding.” It was always the same: just when I was enjoying the augmented reality experience of the high-energy plumbing teacher, through my video goggles, the countdown toward the blackout began. The AI, Big Dog, as it had renamed itself, required its populations to limit their…
Time Storm at Tesco
Clean up on aisle five I was shopping, feeling the residual chill in the freezer aisle at the local Tesco supermarket, when a national alert blurted out on everyone’s mobile phone at once. The unmistakable, blunt synchronised chimes rippled through the cavernous, white-walled consumer warehouse, echoing through the open space. An elderly lady nearby fumbled…
The Keeper
Light is death ‘Don’t go toward the light.’ That was why lighthouses were built. The light was death on rocks; the light was the signal for the hidden trap just beneath the black waves. But there were no more waves. There was no more sea. It had grown hotter every year for a hundred years.…
Invasive Species
The scene of the incident was nothing I hadn’t seen dozens of times before, but I never lost that spike of adrenaline as I climbed out of my heavily branded eCar and sauntered to the police tape hooked up around the drive of the suburban home. Two uniformed officers were loitering awkwardly to dissuade visitors…
Keeping Company
A pool of water from the lashing rain grew outside the long, shallow factory window, a mirror on the concrete. The pool reflected imposing floodlights, as the heavy drops exploded into expanding circles. The edges of the gathering water nudged out tentatively, reaching, like life wanting more. It was as if nature was amassing for…
New Day
Graveyards of idiots I reached a moment of pure honesty on the morning of the eve of my fifty-fifth birthday. I could hear that infernal song by The Smiths, Come Armageddon droning from somewhere in the house, and it triggered me. I dared to think out of the mental sheep pen I had put myself…
Back to the Soil
I had damaged myself. The blood was caked about my hand and wrist and had made the cuff of my maroon cotton shirt a moist mat of dark material. I lifted the tissue paper I had grabbed at the time of the incident, and it refused to detach, stuck to the sliced, loose skin on…
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Dystopian Days 