It’s the end of the year so that means it’s time for my annual Best Free Short Speculative Fiction list. I sold three shorts in 2020 myself. My flash fiction piece “Tomorrow’s Dinosaurs” was published by Fabula Argentea, my short story “Sister of the Weald” was included in Run Rabbit Books’ Tiny Tales anthology, and another flash, “The Stony Gaze of Eternity” was sold to an anthology that hasn’t been released yet. Keeping in mind that my taste runs toward horror and darker/grittier sci-fi and fantasy, here is my list of the best free speculative short stories published in 2020.
The longest story on my list, this spooky tale of a witch and her caretaker by author M. Rickert comes in at over 8000 words and was published in late October on Tor’s website as the perfect Halloween treat.
This nightmarish tale from J.A.W. McCarthy of what a woman endures from an unseen stalker builds anticipation until you might have trouble sitting still and it was published in October by Apparition Lit.
Author Lora Gray made my list last year and they did it again in 2020. This dark fantasy published in the August issue of Dream of Shadows tells the tale of a doomed young woman who searches for her own version of salvation.
Author Claire Wrenwood’s Frankensteinian tale of a mother’s loss and a patchwork girl’s heartbreak in the August edition of Nightmare suggests the world’s real monsters still walk among us.
Give me a forest full of ghosts and brave girls fighting for their village and I’m hooked. Author Kate Dollarhyde tells a spellbinding tale in the Summer issue of Kaleidotrope.
Don’t let the title fool you. There’s nothing cute about this sci-fi gothic tale of doomed love by author Natalia Theodoridou in the April issue of Uncanny Magazine.
This tale of a guilt-ridden sister and her younger brother facing an alien apocalypse is reminiscent of “The War of the Worlds”. Written by author Vanessa Fogg, this story was published in Issue 13 of Mithila Review.
In the March 23rd issue of The New Yorker, the jaundiced eye of writer Kate Folk guides us through a near-future relationship that makes the travails of online dating today look easy by comparison.
Novel Noctule just hit the short story scene at the start of the year, but they’ve already published a dark jewel in this tale of a highly disturbing painting by Michael Balletti.
Chris Cornetto’s tale of a sentient relic awakening to debate between searching for its former Master or serving a new purpose is my kind of dark fable and it was published in the February issue of Metaphorosis Magazine.
If you enjoyed these stories and want to find more like them,
check out these 20 websites. I bet you’ll find plenty to entertain you this
holiday season.
https://www.apparitionlit.com/
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/
https://dailysciencefiction.com/
https://www.dreamofshadows.co.uk/
https://flashfictionmagazine.com/
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/
https://magazine.metaphorosis.com/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/
http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/
http://www.strangehorizons.com/
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