Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy Stories

NOTE: No submissions will be accepted until the current anthology is published.

Science fiction stories. Fantasy stories. Horror stories. All for adults, but of the family-friendly persuasion.

T. Gene Davis’s Speculative Blog posts free science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories–mostly by guest authors. Subscribe (on the left) for the free sci-fi, horror and fantasy stories newsletter delivered when new stories post. The stories accepted are for adults (sometimes with mature themes), but safe to leave open on a tablet at the kitchen table where kids can get ahold of it. I currently pay $100 (US) for the right to publish your story on the blog and in the anthology. Check out the submission guidelines for more information.

Here are a few stories chosen at random to read, or check out the archives for more.

  • Voodoo as I Say
    One morning a dark-haired woman in her mid-twenties walked into my office. A flowing blue dress dangled off her small frame, while her gaunt face hid under a wide hat containing enough feathers for flight. A fraying at her elbows suggested her blouse had been in the family a while. Her pale lips fluttered. In respect, I rose to my full seven-foot height, and then she spoke. “My husband is a zombie.”
  • The Elephant on the Moon
    At precisely 11:32 AM on October 24th 1893 an elephant appeared on the moon. Her name was Flossy. No explanation has ever been offered for this wholly unexpected phenomenon, largely because it occurred so completely outside human observation that no explanation was ever requested. Flossy was exactly six years, nine months, and twenty-eight days old, when she made moonfall. She weighed 6,943 pounds, and was, all things considered, in excellent health. She was also, it must be said, remarkably perplexed. In fact, at that moment Flossy may have been the single most perplexed elephant in all of history. More perplexed than the first elephant to encounter peanuts. More baffled than the young elephant who was first expected to tap dance. More confused even than the middle-aged elephant who had inexplicably found herself leading an army across the Alps. Elephants are, generally speaking, quite intelligent creatures, and Flossy was a reasonably clever example of her species. Her present circumstances were, however, quite outside the realm of normal elephantine experience. Flossy’s memory, which, as one would expect, was prodigious, encompassed an early childhood in the wild, the heartbreak of being captured and separated from her mother, a long, uncomfortable sea voyage, and a subsequent life spent being taken from place to place and gawked at by strange bipedal creatures. Nowhere in that store of experience was there anything that might begin to compare with the sensation of having been inside a tent on the outskirts of Carlisle, IN one moment and on …
  • Tiny Dolls
    "Wasn't your Aunt Elda just a little touched in the head?" Mrs. Casey asked, tapping her forehead. Mary Beth Quincy's eyebrows shot up. "A little? Oh no. A lot, I'd say! Always talking about curses and such." The two women snickered. Mary Beth's husband, Andy, joined in the laughter. Their daughter, Kimmie, looked around Great-Aunt Elda's living room. So many grown-ups but no one cared now if her brother, Jack, put his wet glass directly on the table. No one cared if someone sat in her great-aunt's favorite chair or spilled coffee on the rug. Kimmie remembered: Great-Aunt Elda had told her that everyone considered her to be a strange old lady. She even said that they couldn't wait 'til she, Elda Warren, died. "Then they'll see," she said. "They will see." Well, now she did die and Kimmie thought that maybe her great aunt truly was off her rocker; she had never let anyone--not even her, her only great niece (who really was very careful), go near the dollhouse that stood by itself at the top of the attic stairs. Kimmie pulled on her mother's sleeve. "The dollhouse," she said. "The one in the attic. Can I have it?"
  • All Heaven in a Rage
    She’s evil, the witch next door, she and her feline fiends. She with her hooked beak, they with their killing claws and dagger teeth that take my darling pretty birds. I grab my broom. I throw the back door wide as her cats come creeping and leaping down into my garden. Black cats with marble eyes, brown streaky ones, milk ones with sulfurous spots. My robin lovebirds dance on the seed table, pecking together in the morning mist. My blessed ravens squabble below in the weeds over scraps. I keep one eye on the weathervane, perched high on my leaky roof. The wind comes from the east north east, it’s safe and true; one degree westwards and it’ll blow me a deadly note. But I shan’t be caught out; I won’t be distracted whilst tending my herb garden to perish the way my wicked-hearted mother went, felled by the cursed changing of the wind. No true witch can endure the faerie wind which blows from the west with all its pale magic. My mother was careless, the faerie wind won’t get me, the oldest witch of Suburbville. The cats though, and she next door, they ooze constant sneakiness and cunning; my feathered ones always dine in mortal danger. I rattle my broom in the air; the furred ones pause in their wickedness. “Woman! Cats!” I screech, stumbling to the fence, swiping at stalking cats. I bang on the wooden slats until my crooked teeth jangle. And at last she appears, …
  • One Night in the Trench
    Gerald saw the shadowy figure twice before; drifting between corpses in no-man's-land, wavering in the dark. Nerves, he convinced himself. But this time, as it stood in the trench only feet away, there was no easy explanation. His rifle leveled on the intruder. "Identify yourself!" Behind the folds of hood topping the black-robed figure, an even voice answered: "So, you can see me."
  • Triumph of the Skies
    Stars above shatter and rain down as glittering dust. Sima peers from her window at the shining dark sky to watch the snow sprinkle down. The tip of her nose grows cold where it presses the glass. Frost forms where she breathes. She scratches a star into the ice with her finger nail. Every snowflake is different, her mother told her once. The house breathes quiet. In the basement the furnace rumbles like a purring cat.
  • On the Wings of Doves
    Father first awoke the topiaries the morning after Mother died. Shrubs wriggled loose from their dirt when he passed, dormant bushes burst free and scampered across the countryside. Thus it went for eighteen years. I lived my life knowing that Father could awaken plants, but I did not realize what I, his daughter, could awaken.
  • Free to a Bad Home
    You now have the chance to adopt your very own hellhound puppy! Due to decreasing demand for eternal damnation over the last two millennia (yes, we're looking at you, J.C.) we've been forced to downsize our staff. That means we no longer have the demonpower necessary to take care of our four-legged friends. And you have the opportunity of a lifetime.
  • A Way Out
    The corridor mimicked the Martian landscape; linoleum flecked with rusty reds and dusky pinks, and the color on the walls a dull yellow like the alien sky. Mikhail’s boots, gray like the studded metal doors flanking him on either side, sent echoes ahead of him as he marched. Tiny green lights blinked at him from the security cameras in the ceiling, and his breathing shuddered loud in his ears. Beneath a wool jacket and nylon shirt, his back prickled with sweat. Not because of the ever-watchful green-eyed guardians; he was used to those. It was the uncertainty of whether or not they’d believe his performance.
  • Annie’s Planets
    Nico noticed the little girl as she pressed herself against the glass window of his antique store. She stared with intent but when he smiled, she didn't smile back. He returned to his work but looked up over the wire-rim of his glasses as the bell above the door tinkled. The little girl strode in, black braid swishing behind her, followed by a frazzled woman. "Annie, wait," the woman said, but the girl ignored her. Instead she stopped at the end of the counter to focus on the project in front of Nico.