Announcing “Encore: Animal Kingdom” Flash Fiction Contest Winners!
Announcing the winners of the “Encore: Animal Kingdom” July 2026 flash fiction contest!
Read it nowS13 - Encore
Trial by Ember
The first thing that struck Rell was the silence. It wasn’t the absence of sound. No. The crowd still breathed, shifted, whispered. But the shape of it. A hollowed silence, like lungs emptied and waiting to be refilled. It gathered around the
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The Champion of Pecullar
“See?” Joler exclaimed, waking me up. “I beg Crobet to train with me every day, but he just sits there!”
“Why haven’t you been training?” Turgess snapped. “You’re getting flabby!”
I shrugged, regretting giving them the access code to the underground command center. “When was the last threat?
How to Flirt in Church
Martha scanned the pews as she entered the sanctuary, one hand slipping almost unconsciously into her bag. Her fingers brushed the spines of two books, one as thick as her fist and one as thin as a pencil. The thick one was, of course, her Bible.
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The Package
Have to get out of here. No time to waste. I weave through the long corridors at the edge of the army base, counting turns, counting breaths.
The vials jangle in my pockets, though I’d wrapped them in paper before leaving the lab. If they break
Mercy in the Sky
As usual, morning in the village was quiet. Until I saw Martha.
She was hauling boxes into the street outside her cottage. Everyone knew her as the widow who hadn’t left her home since her husband’s death five months ago. A porcelain lamp shattered against
Six Funerary Rings
The first ring came to me in the night, carried by servants of the Undead King, iron masks concealing their faces.
The bird was dying when I found it. When I stroked its soft head, I felt its life—a fierce little thing, bright as a
Heap of Trouble
I’m not robbing the witch. Or so I told myself while creeping toward her cottage by moonlight. What used to be her cottage, really—she’d died the day before. Earlier that evening, I’d heard the chanting of her coven from my home. After the
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The Lint Job
Something skittered under Avery’s bed.
Not again.
He opened his eyes. The bedroom door was cracked open, sending a thin line of hallway light over the bed. Across the room, the clock on Avery’s dresser showed 9:47 p.m. Its digital face illuminated the Captain America
Skin-Sealed Sanctum – A Dreaming Machines Story
“Nasir, do you think another tattoo is necessary?” asked the robotic skull from its place hanging on a dusty shelf. His eyes glowed azure.
Nasir lifted his gaze from the pencil-sized steel spike—his rudimentary device for embedding the crushed blue Caerulum
Uncoiled
“Florence. Florence! I’m sorry. Please come back.”
The shouts ricochet between the chimney-like hoodoo rocks, making it seem like Aunt Junie is everywhere at once. I huff. If anyone could master that superpower, it’d be her.
“Leave me alone! I hate you.”
When Lions Fly
“His mama left him.”
I fumbled to take off my reading glasses and blinked at my seven-year-old nephew, hoping the creature in his arms might turn out to be a puppy or barn cat. Alas, the round ears and dark spots peppering the buff-colored fur said
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