Humor

A swaggering adventurer named Morag the Mighty is indignantly turned away at a city gate by thoroughly unimpressed guards.

Jared visits a brusque supernatural functionary who will arrange any act of revenge for a fee — and impulsively commits to something far worse than he intended before he can take it back.

A mysterious website offers vague prophecies about your future — and Morris discovers that knowing what's coming is entirely useless when you have no way to change it.

Frankie the fly accidentally ends up on a plane and finally achieves their lifelong dream of soaring high above the city — right up until a rolled-up newspaper intervenes.

On her first day as a dungeon cleaner, goblin Azravel gets an earful from her veteran colleague Grengel about the particular misery of cleaning up after elemental spirits.

A time-stopping thief slips between the ticks of a frozen party, helping themselves to valuables and mischief before stepping back through a tear in time — never to see the chaos they leave behind.

In a world where everyone gets a once-a-decade undo of any past action, one recipient agonises over how to spend their CTRL+Z day — and ends up paralysed by the infinite weight of consequence.

A minstrel performing for his life before Malfor the Mighty — a tyrant who executes anyone who bores him — talks his way off the chopping block by offering the one thing the jaded king truly craves.

A self-declared atheist spends a night on the couch of a friend's 'murder house', musing on how we confront the dark history of the places we inhabit — and wakes utterly untroubled.

David Bowie and H.G. Wells take a faster-than-light joyride through space in a steam-powered ship, trading quips and setting a course for Mars.

A far-future museum guide leads a crowd through the baffling mysteries of early 21st-century technology, culminating in the most horrifying revelation of all: people had to talk to each other.

Friedre wages an escalating battle of wills against a door that refuses to stay shut, resorting to increasingly drastic measures to defeat her wooden adversary.

A professional body-swap operator rents their consciousness to a rich teenager for a night out, then must navigate 24 hours inside an unfamiliar body while hoping the customer returns theirs on time.

A secret service chief reinstates ghosts as agents, only to discover their first mission has an unexpected obstacle.

An unreliable narrator tells a story about a chance encounter with a stranger.

A soul-finder with a preternatural sixth sense describes their nightly work tracking down panicked, newly-dead souls and guiding them to the next stage of the afterlife.

A buyer finally takes delivery of a legendary, history-shaping artefact from its reverent seller.

Two old friends reminisce in a cosy tavern about the chaotic days when magical gates spat unpredictable creatures into the world — and they decide to have one last adventure.

A weary government clerk works through a long list of furious, blustering wizards to inform them that magic is being banned.

A narrator casually recounts life with their homemade 'meat puppet' — an eerie physical clone they mostly use for company at bars and dancing — while cheerfully sidestepping any ethical questions.

A regular client visits Jerry Kolynski — psychic slug and therapist — for a 20-minute session of transcendent visions, only to be judged for it by a stranger on the street.

Cthulhu receives a deeply unsettling vision — not of apocalyptic triumph, but of a plan that was never going to work — and is forced to confront an existential mid-aeons career crisis.

A journalist treks across two continents to interview Alfonso, a 3,437-year-old tortoise and the oldest known creature alive — only to find he has very little to say for himself.