Here you’ll find a selection of short stories to read for free online.
We’re talking short short (under 10k words in most places), so they’re good for a single sitting between checking Facebook, checking your emails, and then checking Facebook again.
All stories featured here (along with many others) are included in my short story collection EARTH and Other Small Things, available from Amazon and all other popular online bookstores – and maybe a few unpopular ones, too.
The Ancient Game
“The fittest thrive, the rest survive.” Our ancestors long dreamed of far realms, of alien worlds beneath strange skies. Now those worlds exist, constructed of code, coloured with imagination, and it is up to us – here, now – to make them home. Yet for all that we advance, we only hide a darker truth: … Continue reading The Ancient Game
The Rime of Auld Hallow
‘Neath Summer sun please dance and sing
And smiling make your hay
What memories you plant in Spring
The Autumn takes away
The Passage of Time
It was my first time doing this for real. I’d sort of done it with this girl I knew when I was fourteen, but that was just a couple of kids experimenting. It wasn’t serious. Not like this. I was nervous as hell, I can tell you that much. She sat across the table from … Continue reading The Passage of Time
I Feel So Damn Good
You know that crushing sense of disappointment you get when you wake up? No? Well, that might just be me. That feeling as you drift off to sleep is exquisite. The bed all to yourself, the warmth of the duvet around you, the softness of the pillows. Perfection. Then everything about you is carried off … Continue reading I Feel So Damn Good
Earth
Gary. Well, that had once been a pretty common name. Nothing really drove the current situation home so much as the simple thought that he was now the last Gary. There were no other Garys. Couldn’t be any other Garys, forever. There are some thoughts which make you want to laugh and cry at the … Continue reading Earth
The Paradox of Zacheus Evergreen
Word of Zacheus reached the city of Khorwa long before he arrived in person. An important lesson there: rumour flies faster than even the world’s swiftest airship. The word itself varied in weight, from claiming Zacheus was more than mortal, and was in fact an elemental spirit, some primordial thing left over from the shaping … Continue reading The Paradox of Zacheus Evergreen
One Thousand Dead Stars
It’s a survival tactic, being blind to pain. How can the predator kill the prey when she understands exactly what she’s taking from it? We’ve developed in spite of this truth, able to slip our blinkers just long enough to join hands and work together. But not always. Sometimes being blind means we don’t have … Continue reading One Thousand Dead Stars
