Size / / /

Content warning:


i.
“What is a Monster?”
you ask Mother.
She wraps you in teeth, tendrils,
smiles,
and silence.

ii.
“Am I a Monster?”
you ask Mother,
carrion curdling
in the gaps between fingertips and fingernails.
You are old enough now to lick them clean yourself.

She is quiet
as her head probes the corpse-cave,
questing, searching.
Her scalp is bald,
lined with wrinkles like runnels.
Blood and viscera
are not what clog her ears
like honey,
like sweetened hope.

iii.
On her pyre
your tears, heavy with age,
dissolve her makeup.
Knife-rips, bullet-bites
older than your memory
smile under your grief.
“What are these?”
you ask no-one.
“Who gave her these?”
you wonder
as flames buoy her away.



Sharang Biswas is a writer, artist, and award-winning game designer. His nonfiction writing has appeared in publications such as Dicebreaker and Eurogamer, while his fiction has been published by or is forthcoming in Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Sub-Q Magazine, Baffling Magazine, and Neon Hemlock Press. He is the co-editor of Honey & Hot Wax: An Anthology of Erotic Art Games (Pelgrane Press) and Strange Lusts / Strange Loves: An Anthology of Erotic Interactive Fiction (Strange Horizons). You can find Sharang on Twitter as @SharangBiswas, or visit his website sharangbiswas.myportfolio.com.
Current Issue
20 Jan 2025

Strange Horizons
Surveillance technology looms large in our lives, sold to us as tools for safety, justice, and convenience. Yet the reality is far more sinister.
Vans and campers, sizeable mobile cabins and some that were barely more than tents. Each one a home, a storefront, and a statement of identity, from the colorful translucent windows and domes that harvested sunlight to the stickers and graffiti that attested to places travelled.
“Don’t ask me how, but I found out this big account on queer Threads is some kind of super Watcher.” Charlii spins her laptop around so the others can see. “They call them Keepers, and they watch the people that the state’s apparatus has tagged as terrorists. Not just the ones the FBI created. The big fish. And people like us, I guess.”
It's 9 a.m., she still hasn't eaten her portion of tofu eggs with seaweed, and Amaia wants the day to be over.
Nadjea always knew her last night in the Clave would get wild: they’re the only sector of the city where drink and drug and dance are unrestricted, and since one of the main Clavist tenets is the pursuit of corporeal joy in all its forms, they’ve more or less refined partying to an art.
surviving / while black / is our superpower / we lift broken down / cars / over our heads / and that’s just a tuesday
After a few deft movements, she tossed the cube back to James, perfectly solved. “We’re going to break into the Seattle Police Department’s database. And you’re going to help me do it.”
there are things that are toxic to a bo(d)y
By: Michelle Kulwicki
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
  In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents Michelle Kulwicki's 'Bee Season' read by Emmie Christie Subscribe to the Strange Horizons podcast on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify.
Wednesday: Motheater by Linda H. Codega 
Friday: Revising Reality: How Sequels, Remakes, Retcons, and Rejects Explain The World by Chris Gavaler and Nat Goldberg 
Issue 13 Jan 2025
Issue 6 Jan 2025
By: Samantha Murray
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 23 Dec 2024
Issue 16 Dec 2024
Issue 9 Dec 2024
Issue 2 Dec 2024
By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 25 Nov 2024
Issue 18 Nov 2024
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 11 Nov 2024
Issue 4 Nov 2024
Load More