Short Stories
Calm, Quiet, Silence
Crepuscular Magazine
“The worst part is that they buzz.”
Free to read at Crepuscular Magazine | Accompanying micro-interview | Accompanying essay: On Balance
Rosewater, Clinging to the Tongue
Apparition Literary Magazine
“Your ghosts drift around your feet, formless things like pale kittens, winding between your ankles as if they have the weight to make you trip.”
On the Temporary Nature of Thunderstorms
Kaleidotrope
“The wizard lives in a cabin on a thunderstorm, and the wolf comes to him on a slantwise stroke of lightning.”
The Ferns and the Fiddleheads
Apex Magazine
“But the ferns have turned Papa’s thoughts to slow, ponderous things, moving the way a fighter does just before they hit the ground.”
Wet, Dry, Bitter
Apex Magazine
“You are thirsty, sitting at the smooth black table in the school science lab, and there are two choices before you: one glass of acid. One glass of water.”
A Fragility, a Shadow
Robotic Ambitions
“I’m down in what used to be Missoula, Montana when I first hear the name of the man I hope will kill me.”
Buy paperback or ebook from Apex Book Company | Amazon | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Facts That Lead to My Choosing of the Hawk
Murderbirds
“Yes, it must be able to see very well, and hawks hunt best when the sun blasts maniac rays down onto the earth.”
The Consequences of Microwaving Styrofoam
PodCastle
“I don’t want her pain any more than I want her friendship, and I tell myself that’s why I wonder if eating from microwaved Styrofoam can cause swollen wrists.”
Love Sharp Enough to Rend
The Dark
“She was drowning, gasping brine down her raw and waterlogged throat, so I took her.”
The Hunter, the Monster, and the Things That Could Have Been
Monster Lairs
“You find the dying woman-thing in an alley, breathing her final wet, rasping breaths in a heap of white trash bags that seems more like a throne.”
In Defense of Forever
Crepuscular Magazine
“She made me promise her forever. I wonder if she would be alive if I’d loved her enough to leave.”
Prototype
Dark Matter Presents: Human Monsters
“Your first prototype is nothing more than parted lips and the end of a nose, printed from thin, soft silicone. You lick your own lips as you take it from the 3D printer.”
Nothing That Bleeds
Apex Magazine
“Rain patters lightly on the pavement, and you bleed among broken glass in the cool afterglow of the sunset.”
Free to read/listen at Apex | Buy the issue from Apex Magazine
You, But Only Sometimes
Factor Four Magazine
“You kiss like thunder: deep enough to shake the earth, even if only a little.”
Drown, Degrade, Dissent
Dark Matter Magazine
“I move to the officer’s phone as they haul your husband’s body, dripping, out of the pond.”
Witchbreaker
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
“You lose a lot of time in a skywitch embrace, that sphere where her presence compresses everything.”
The Rising Wind of Your Name
Spirit Machine
“The first thing I see: you’re slumped over the controls, sweat wending its way down the glass over some meter I don’t understand.”
Funeral Notes
Cossmass Infinities
“I am five, and the lady in the red dress smells of roses, vanilla, amber, and that powder ladies put on their faces.”
Pull
PodCastle
“She let me spoon the oatmeal into her mouth and I chatted idly while she worked it across her tongue and swallowed it. My mouth poured sweetness into her ears while my spoon poured sweetness into her mouth.”
Free to read/listen at PodCastle
Static
Cossmass Infinities
“Don’t you know me better than I know myself? Or is that a lie too?”
Last Letters
Apocalyptic
“Every time Mom leaves, she puts a letter under her pillow.”
Amazon | Amazon.ca | Zombies Need Brains (trade paperback) | Zombies Need Brains (Ebook)
Yellow and Pink
Writers and Illustrators of the Future Volume 36
“The first time he’d killed Edward Weaver, Nathan spent the first years he could remember of his childhood having regular panic attacks.”
Story illustrated by Max Cavun
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | IndieBound | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Leah Ning 