Dark, dystopian short stories added every month for your reading pleasure. Only minutes to read, and packed with technological marvels and disturbing, stark futurescapes.
What’s Left Behind
I had never been to False World before. The interstellar cruise on Horizon Finder had made it part of the itinerary after media interest bloomed over the outpost in this far-off, forgotten solar system. One red dwarf star, one marbled-milky gas giant and a world made up of the garbage from a thousand colonies, shipped…
Growth
When the vice president turned on the ambassador, it was shocking but not surprising. You can sense a tsunami in the swell as the sand is exposed. Truth did not matter anymore. The truth was not popular, more than that, the truth was destructive if left to bloom. The ambassador tried to speak but was…
The Days that Followed
The memory was a fixed one. Some memories are like sediment, debris in the tidal flow of the mind, others are lost and mostly disintegrated, but some are fixed and solid like metal, a hard rock of mineral, an elemental thing that does not die. Dancing naked with her, slowly swaying from side to side,…
Death by Elephant
For a robot, it was enormous, a huge silver barrel of a body the size of a bus, swaying side to side rhythmically as it strode toward the centre of the arena. Rylan felt the ground shudder with every deliberately slow step. Its long, curved tusks were engraved with strange symbols and its hydraulic legs…
Project Icarus
“Everything in this life starts and ends with money.” That seems especially poignant now. He said it softly, like an apology – just before he raised the handgun and shot me through the right eye, so my spasming body tumbled back into the freshly dug hole in the forest floor. There was a blinding flash,…
Are we Nearly there Yet?
I loved my holidays. They were the only times I cared about, to be brutally honest. They were also the only time we were all together. The kids were growing older, now both teenagers, just about coping with us as parents when their worlds were expanding. Zyle, my eldest was about to finish her training…
Products
“What is the value you have?” A simple, short question. The start question for every potential employer. Answering was simple. I didn’t really need to answer but it was expected. I had a chart that mapped out my exact value, displayed above my online profile. At one end were my tracked skills, analysed and packaged…
Follow the Blood
Absolute silence combined with absolute darkness can drive you mad. Your brain begins to fill in the void with its own noises as if your blood has a dimension within it, a layer of a world you don’t witness unless you cut through the clutter of senses. I swear I could hear a waterfall, and…
Remains
I didn’t realise at first. Everybody was dead. Everybody. I was on the beach, the sun was out, the wind was gusty, and my 14-year-old daughter, Siri had gone for an Orange Twist at the gaudy trailer with the noisy generator, parked above the tideline. “Go on, then. Get a lolly, I don’t mind.” “Thanks…
Abuse
The routine The bedroom had always been a stressful place, a box. Grace took a deep breath and gazed at the overbearing black and white wallpaper framing the open door opposite, as she pulled the summer duvet up to her chin. She wore thick pyjamas, even in the heat, to give her a sense of…
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Dystopian Days 